Trial to educate inner-west communities about home fire dangers – VIDEO - Burwood
Published: 12 Apr 2024 02:53pm
A Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) Command in Sydney’s inner west is trialling a concept to engage cultural communities about residential fire dangers, in their own languages at public information sessions.
FRNSW’s Metropolitan East 3, which covers the inner west of Sydney, held a successful engagement session last week with around three-dozen members of its local Chinese-Australian community at Burwood Park.
A crew from Burwood Fire Station demonstrated why fire blankets and not water should be used to extinguish kitchen fires and it reinforced the life-saving values of working smoke alarms.
The crowd was addressed in Mandarin and Cantonese by Firefighter, Jimmyson Chan, and the local residents had the opportunity to receive Chinese-language pamphlets outlining home fire safety advice.
The foreign language engagement session was the idea of Zone Commander, Josh Turner, who is keen to continue the program for other prominent cultures in the inner west, including the Greek and Malaysian communities.
“We’ve developed a great partnership with Burwood Council,” Supt Turner said, “We have a very large Chinese-Australian community in Burwood and we’ve been looking at ways to share our home fire safety messages.
“We’ve been wanting to educate those who have emigrated recently and even their parents, who they’ve brought over since.
“Having translators on board, we’ve been able to go straight to the community groups and deliver those messages direct to Chinese-Australian residents.
“Hopefully, the end result is we have fewer fires and we save lives.
“The Chinese-Australian community is rightfully proud of its cooking prowess, for example, so if we can help prevent kitchen fires and promote the installation of working smoke alarms, we can avoid tragic outcomes.
“By engaging local residents in Mandarin and Cantonese, we can also better understand the communities we serve.”
The public can find a range of home fire safety tips on the FRNSW website: https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/page.php?id=879 [external link]
Media note – FRNSW footage of the fire safety engagement session and grabs are available here: https://vimeo.com/931929258/6f9d837c50?share=copy [external link]
Updated: 12 Apr 2024 02:57pm
Related safety topics
The leading cause of home fires in NSW is leaving cooking unattended.
It“s the law to have at least one working smoke alarm installed on every level of your home.
Details about this incident may change and should not be used as emergency information and/or advice.
For all life threatening emergencies, call Triple Zero (000)
For flood information, warnings or requests for non-life threatening assistance, call the SES on 132 500 or visit the NSW State Emergency Service website here. [external link].
For information directly relating to bushfires please call the Bush Fire Information Line on 1800 679 737 or visit the NSW Rural Fire Service Website here. [external link]
Stations nearby
12b Livingstone Street, Burwood NSW 2134
16 Victoria Street, Ashfield NSW 2131
153 Concord Road, Concord (North Strathfield) NSW 2137