Fire safety awareness campaign focus on Oakville student housing

The Oakville Fire Department’s door-to-door safety awareness campaign this year will have a special focus on college-age student rental housing.

The annual home awareness campaign, which kicked off this week and runs until Sept. 30, will see Oakville fire crews make over 3,600 door-to-door visits to local homes to raise awareness about fire safety.

The “informative” visits are aimed helping residents learn how to protect themselves, their families and pets from fire hazards, including carbon monoxide exposure.

Crews will have a greater focus on college-age student rental housing after seeing recent fires where smoke alarms were not present or working in rental homes.

In their visits to these rental homes, fire crews plan to go over the legislated fire safety responsibilities of landlords and students, risks of unattended cooking, use of candles, disabling of smoke alarms, and preventative actions that can save their lives.

Ontario’s Fire Code requires that homes have a working smoke alarm on each floor and outside all sleeping areas. Carbon monoxide alarms are also required outside sleeping areas if the home has an attached garage, fireplace, wood stove or fuel-burning appliance.

While going home-to-home, fire crews will also distribute fire safety information in English, French and the most common languages spoken in Oakville – Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, Urdu and Portuguese.

The home visits will take place between 6 to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 1 to 5 p.m. on weekends. Firefighters will be in uniform and residents are not obligated to provide them access to their home as this is a courtesy call only.

For information in another language, residents can call 905-845-6601 and request for over-the-phone interpretation which is available in more than 240 languages.

More information on fire prevention and safety is available by visiting here.