Intensifying fire awareness

FIRE AND Life Safety Awareness Week will be celebrated from Sunday, October 27, 2019, to Saturday, November 2, 2019 under the theme, ‘Mek Wi Fix it… Community First!’

It is a time when the Fire Brigade, predominantly the fire prevention arm, intensifies its fire-awareness and life safety educational programmes, as a means of highlighting important fire and life-safety principles and practices.

As is the custom, the main objective of the week’s activities is to highlight the threat of fires to life and property, and to educate the public on safety measures to adopt to prevent fires.

We will employ all possible measures to promote fire safety consciousness, as we provide a range of information and services on all aspects of fire safety and fire prevention.

We will be focusing on people of all ages from neighbourhood watches, citizens’ associations, youth clubs, schools, church groups and other community organisations who we will be encouraging to participate fully in the week’s activities.

Fire and Life Safety Awareness Week is giving us the opportunity to focus our minds on our individual responsibility of protecting our communities, our children, the elderly and the physically challenged who are the most vulnerable in the event of a fire. We all must work together in the continued education of the country in order to minimise the negative impact of fires on our communities.

Therefore, let us not view this as an exhibition to be seen for a week and then forgotten. But let us seriously consider the ramifications of remaining ignorant to resourceful information that could save lives and protect property.

As we implore you, the wider public, to think safety first and to develop safety habits, we remain your Jamaica Fire Brigade, ever committed to the carrying out of our mandate of ‘Saving Lives, Protecting Property’.

STEWART BECKFORD Commissioner Jamaica Fire Brigade