Region recognizes fire prevention week

In the midst of fire prevention week, Sherbrooke’s city council acknowledged the accomplishments of its fire department, which was recently recognized by the Mérite québécois de la sécurité civile, Quebec’s civil security awards, for its work in prevention and risk awareness. The award was given at a ceremony earlier this month with regard to the 2018 awareness campaign carried out during civil security week.

The province also recently recognized former Sherbrooke fire Chief Gaetan Drouin with a medal for meritorious actions for his work during the Lac-mégantic rail disaster in 2013.

For the remainder of the week the city will be holding awareness activities aimed at ensuring smoke detectors are working properly and adopting good fire safety habits. Municipal fire inspectors will be present today, October 9, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Carrefour Belvédère mall, and on Thursday and Friday, October 10 and 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Galeries Quatre-saisons in Fleurimont with burned out kitchen cabinets to help raise awareness.

According to the office of Quebec’s Public Safety Minister, Geneviève Guilbault , more than 16,500 fires take place across the province each year, 4,500 of which are in homes and 51 per cent of which are as a result of human error. Between 2015 and 2017 131 people lost their lives in building fires, and in 35 per cent of residential fires no functioning fire safety equipment was present.

Elsewhere in the region, Magog will have a fire prevention kiosk set up at the local Canadian Tire on Thursday afternoon, and will be hosting an open house at Station one on Sherbrooke Street from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 12.