The Montreal Fire Safety Service (SIM) has just abolished its student brigade which checked the smoke alarms of tens of thousands of Montreal homes every summer, learned The Press.
The SIM staff has indicated that it prefers to ask its firefighters to make targeted visits on the sidelines of their regular interventions. The opposition to the town hall denounces a “very worrying” decision.
After 12 years of existence, the smoke alarm brigade “will not be back” in 2023, Chantal Bibeau, assistant director at SIM, confirmed in a telephone interview on Friday. “The offense will be done differently this year. »
“The impact was not what we wanted,” she continued. People since the pandemic have been working from home, people were complaining that they were being disturbed, there were a lot of absentees. The brigade was also experiencing recruiting problems.
The smoke alarm brigade was created in 2010. Each summer, more than forty fire safety students were hired to “check the presence and proper functioning of the smoke alarm” by knocking on doors. . They could also provide it for free. Until last year, they visited between 30,000 and 50,000 homes per summer for this purpose, sometimes more than the permanent employees of the SIM.
“Thank you for working to save lives and ensuring the safety of Montrealers! “, had told them Valérie Plante by visiting them, in 2019, according to her Twitter account.
“Work in the right places”
SIM fire prevention programs have been in the news for several weeks. At the end of May, the service’s annual report revealed that its building inspections had been in freefall since 2018. In five years, their number had more than halved, from some 24,000 to around 11,000.
Two weeks earlier, the Globe and Mail revealed that the service had imposed a moratorium on part of the inspections for emergency exits, sparking an outcry.
Each time, the SIM argued that it was making a shift in its prevention activities to “better target [ses] inspection activities in places where it makes a difference,” fire chief Richard Liebmann said last week. “Before, we were really focused on the quantity of inspections. »
The abolition of the smoke alarm brigade is part of the same logic, said Friday the deputy director Bibeau.
We want to target the places where it has an impact. The firefighters will [la vérification de l’avertisseur de fumée] in or near where they made interventions.
Chantal Bibeau, Deputy Director at SIM
A firefighting team moving in response to a call that turns out to be a false alarm will have to knock on nearby doors to check the alarm, Ms.me Bibeau. “We will exceed the numbers we did before, but above all, we will work in the right places,” she also said.
The vice principal added that “over the years, recruiting and retaining young people for the entire summer has become more and more difficult. In 2022, the brigade also posted a marked drop in results, with only 16,000 visits – half the number of the previous year.
“Very worrying”
The decision to abolish the smoke alarm brigade greatly worries the Official Opposition at City Hall.
“It is very worrying, we are talking about the safety of citizens here,” reacted Abdelhaq Sari, of Ensemble Montreal. “I wouldn’t entrust this administration with the public safety of all Montrealers, that’s clear. »
Mr. Sari also says he is disappointed that the abolition of the smoke alarm brigade was not announced to elected officials last week, while the SIM staff was taking stock of its year in City Hall.
“There has been a lot of talk about a new prevention approach lately,” he continued. However, the service does not clearly explain what this new approach is. »