“Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” Smokey The Bear has been bellowing for decades. If you don’t remember Smokey the Bear, you may be a Millennial or even younger - too young to remember those Boy Scout-like campaigns launched since the 1940s asking the public to be careful when they’re out in the woods. According to the friendly, fluffy firefighting advocate, nine out of 10 wildfires are caused by…HUMANS!
Humans? We’re responsible for all of that destruction? You mean we’re careless and have no common sense when it comes to preventing things from burning to a crisp?
Unfortunately, that sounds about right!
Within the last month - before 2018 kicked off - the city’s FDNY recovered an overwhelming amount of victims from residential fires. Sadly, the most epic tragedy of the 2017 (and one of the deadliest in recent history) took 12 residents’ lives in The Bronx in December. The culprit? Reports and an extensive investigations found that the fire was a result of a boy who was playing with a stove in one of the apartments.
Playing with a stove? Various reports also claimed the child was known to fiddle with fire. Long story short, this horrible inferno COULD have been prevented 100 percent if the boy’s guardians were paying attention to his “pastime” and reprimanded him for his history of endangering other peoples’ lives. Numerous editorials have already provided some insight on how poorly a job this child’s parents/guardians did raising him if playing with a stove was acceptable. If the supposed arsonist was an innocent boy who didn’t link possible death with flames - that could spread throughout the entire building - what are we teaching or NOT teaching in order to enforce common sense about fire prevention.
The Bronx blaze was the deadliest fire in the city since 1990 when 87 people reportedly died at a social club. Despite the story making headlines nationwide, another fire in a building on Lenox Road in Brooklyn was reportedly caused by irresponsible people. Officials said a pig roast that was burning in the basement caused a blaze that forced tenants out of the apartment building and into the frigid weather for hours.
Really? Someone in the building felt the need to have a barbecue indoors and put hundreds of residents at risk by not using common sense?
Let’s get real, building codes have changed over the years and insulation materials/electrical wiring used to build or reconstruct old homes have to be up to code by law. With that in mind, human error, laziness and lack of common sense are to blame for almost every fire we read about in the news in New York City (states where brush fires and warehouse fires are common place - but in the city we don’t have many of those that wind up wiping out entire families).
With freezing temperatures hitting the area, residents are bound to turn up the heat in their homes - especially if their landlord doesn’t keep the atmosphere toasty. In retaliation, it seems, tenants turn to space heaters and their kitchen ovens for additional heat sources but fail to abide by simple FDNY safety measures - such as DON’T place space heaters within three feet of other objects and DON’T plus space heaters into extension cords.
How difficult are those advisories??? Really!!! If you ever used a space heater, you know that the power cord itself gets pretty hot to the touch. Why would you risk burning everything in your home - and possibly killing dozens of people?
I have a small space heater in my apartment - but it’s NOT placed within even ONE FOOT of my bed, television, couch or any other objects. It’s also unplugged during the night and when no one is home during the day. I, for one, don’t want to be responsible for the building going up in flames.
Public fire safety education DOES exist - the media publishes/airs a slew of rules to keep in mind about fire prevention. Oh - and how can I forget to mention that human-caused residential fires (fatalities and advisories) are ALL OVER THE NEWS!! If you pick up a newspaper, watch a local broadcast or scroll through social media, you’re going to be blasted with updates and reports on these deadly infernos.
If you’re not learning a valuable lesson by reading about OTHER peoples’ dangerous and tragic mistakes, you must have your head in the sand! Aside from the tragedy of lives lost, there is something tragic about the carelessness of those who could take a few simple steps to following fire safety rules.
In just about all of the fires reported recently, human error was to blame. Last December in Sheepshead Bay, a mother and her three children were killed in a fast-moving fire reportedly caused by an unattended lit menorah. It’s understandable that a devout family wants to observe the holidays, but the fire broke out after 2 in the morning (sleeping with candles lit in another room screams danger!). Clearly, no one was adhering to a common sense rule enforced by the FDNY about using candles in general - do NOT leave them burning in your home unattended. PERIOD!
Whether or not a building has smoke detectors isn’t particularly “life saving” if you hear the alarms too late and can’t escape in time, especially if the alarm goes off when there’s not - in reality - enough time to get out. Residential smoke detectors also don’t come with or activate sprinkler systems that will douse flames or announce safety measures (it would help if a voice programmed inside the alarm also gave evacuation instructions and an advisory to shutting doors, which can keep a fire from spreading).
This winter’s been brutal so far - and my estimation is that no matter how many fire incidents are reported, there are plenty of irresponsible HUMANS who could still use a lesson on the basics from an urban version of Smoky The Bear.
