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REMINDER: Turn clocks back, change smoke alarm batteries this weekend

The end of daylight savings time means more than turning the clock back an hour before hitting the sack on Saturday night. For city fire officials, it’s a reminder to residents to change the batteries in their smoke alarms.
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Nancy Patterson, Canadian Hearing Society and Thunder Bay Fire Rescue Public Education Officer Anthony Stokaluk display visual smoke alarms at the Time to Change Your Batteries smoke alarm awareness event at Intercity Shopping Centre on Friday. (Valerie Marasco, special to tbnewswatch.com)

The end of daylight savings time means more than turning the clock back an hour before hitting the sack on Saturday night.

For city fire officials, it’s a reminder to residents to change the batteries in their smoke alarms.

On Friday Thunder Bay Fire Rescue and the Canadian Hearing Society teamed up at Intercity Shopping Centre to deliver that message to the shopping public.

“Every time change is an opportunity to remind people to test their smoke alarms and put in new batteries,” said Anthony Stokaluk, a public information officer with Thunder Bay Fire Rescue.

“Smoke alarms 10 years-of-age or older should be replaced. It is so important to have an early warning system in place to have more time to escape a fire. It is the law to have a working smoke alarm on every level of your home and outside all sleeping areas.”

Working smoke alarms save lives. They are also mandatory under the law. Residents must have a smoke alarm on every floor in their home.

“We want to remind people that they need to have working smoke alarms in their home in order to be alerted in case of a fire,” said Nancy Patterson, regional director at Canadian Hearing Society Thunder Bay.

“We also wanted to educate everyone about visual smoke alarms to alert people who are deaf or hard of hearing.”

A visual smoke alarm emits a sound, but also flashes a light as a warning to those who can’t hear. About 25 per cent of Canadians have some hearing loss, a number that climbs to 40 per cent in people aged 65 or older.

 

 





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