Shocking statistics accompany holiday season safety message

Fire chief warns residents of unsuspecting dangers for the holidays

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 6, 2016
By Jeremy Grimaldi

One of the worst moments of Larry Bentley’s career was the Christmas Eve he turned up at a York Region crash scene only to find a car split in two - the 18-month-old baby still in the back of the vehicle screaming, both parents in the front, dead.

That memory has stayed with the Vaughan fire chief since the moment he witnessed it as a young recruit until now, a grizzled veteran of the department, for decades.

“It has impacted me a great deal,” he said. “It makes me think about safety during the holidays.”

Bentley was speaking in the lead up to Tuesday’s event in which he gathered with other first responders to highlight all the daily activities that can go wrong during the festive season.

“From our perspective, unattended cooking and smoking are two huge drivers for fires,” he added. “Around the holidays people are cooking under the influence, entertaining under the influence.”

As lighthearted as that warning might sound, the statistics are shocking - one in every three fire deaths occurs between November and December in Canada.

This week’s demonstrations at Vaughan Fire and Rescue, on Major Mackenzie Drive, involved unattended stoves quickly turning into flaming cooking pots. Bentley explained in these situations pots should not be removed, rather covered with a lid and the element turned off.

As for smoke alarms, one might imagine that most in the region are in working condition, but that assumption would be wrong.

Bentley said during his department’s annual Alarmed for Life door-to-door campaigns firefighters find fire and carbon monoxide alarms are not working 49 per cent of the time.

“It’s disappointing for me as the fire chief,” he added.

The message around impaired driving was equally as troubling, with York Police Chief Eric Jolliffe noting that numbers of drivers arrested for impaired driving has increased dramatically to 1,400 charges already this year.

“It’s disappointing, and quite frankly, frightening that we are sharing our roads with so many people that are making the conscious decision to drink alcohol or use drugs and drive.”