Safe cooking message after sheltered housing fire alerts

Scotland’s fire and rescue service (SFRS) has launched a new initiative in response to the alarming number of incidents in sheltered housing complexes in Aberdeen.

In 2016, there were 326 fires in sheltered housing in the Granite City – the majority of which happened in the kitchen.

The SFRS has now teamed up with North East Scotland College (NESCol) and the Aberdeen City Health and Social Care Partnership to promote safe cooking in sheltered housing.

The project has been recently unveiled and will be rolled out in all 39 sheltered housing complex in the city.

One of the key points of the scheme is to encourage elderly people living in sheltered housing to use their microwaves rather than their cookers.

The reasoning is that, by educating residents to make more of their meals in the microwave, it reduces the time they are cooking and the chance of them being distracted while doing so. SFRS found that a lot of cooking fires in sheltered housing occurred because the person got distracted by their phone or television.

The initiative has taken over nine months to set up and Steven Thomson, SFRS Aberdeen watch manager, believes it is an important project.

He said: “One fire is one fire too many for the fire service, so if this can prevent one fire it’s a very worthwhile thing.

“So far, it has been well received by the residents and it will encourage them to think about safety in their homes, particularly when cooking, and that should reduce the amount of dwelling fires we get in sheltered housing.”

“It has been well received by the residents”