By NICOLE VALICEK
A fire safety obstacle course is teaching multicultural groups of people in the community how to stay safe in their homes should disaster strike.
The multicultural liaison department of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Western District was recently granted funding to build three fire safety obstacle courses.
The obstacle course lets the brigade work with English second language students and other multicultural groups in the community.
“In part, our role as Western Zone multicultural liaison officers involves delivering fire safety training to various multicultural groups, including newly arrived migrants to Australia and international students,” Western zone station officer Andrew Stephenson said.
“We are specifically targeting these groups due to statistics showing a higher than average risk of fire in the home.”
Mr Stephenson said due to language barriers, delivering a strong fire safety message could be difficult.
“We have found this obstacle course to be one of the best ways to reinforce the importance of fire safety in the home.”
The obstacle course will be used across the western suburbs.
The obstacle course involves the four steps:
Crawl through a tunnel to simulate crawling down low in a fire
Opening a deadlocked door, to enforce the message that a door should never be deadlocked and the key left elsewhere
Using a telephone to call the fire brigade, enforcing the message of getting out of the house first, then calling from a neighbour’s home.
Ending at the letterbox, to signify a safe meeting place.
The funding was provided by the Laverton and Altona Meadows branch of the Bendigo Bank.
