VIDEO: Connecticut State Fire Marshal Lauri Volkert and her staff have been spearheading an initiative to streamline the fire safety messaging of fire departments across the state for months. But deadly fires wreaking destruction on multiple Connecticut houses in the past couple weeks led her and other state leaders to roll out the initiative, Fire Safe CT, in a more prominent and timely way than they had anticipated on Thursday.
โThe fire service is diverse in the state of Connecticut, so we wanted to be able to come together and provide a unified voice when it comes to fire safety,” Volkert said. โAfter a significant fire, the fire marshals have a lot of hats to wear in terms of doing investigations, following up and taking care of all of that. But, we also want to make sure those fire departments are equipped to get that information out into the community when people are thinking about it.โ
Hartford, Cheshire, Southington, Rocky Hill and Meriden are just a handful of the cities and towns that have been hit by major fires in the past week. Firefighters say blazes can spark seasonally, and one of the most common causes of fires in the summer months is cooking. โPart of the initiative is to make sure that the messages are timely based on the seasons,” Alan Zygmunt, Connecticut Fire Academy public information officer, said. “Fire causes change as the year progresses, and we concentrate on different causes throughout the year.โ
Zygmunt said that educating students about fire safety has long been a priority of fire departments, but now there is a push from fire leaders to promote better fire safety with adults as well. โFor a long time weโve concentrated on grade school, but now we really understand that fire safety is one of the risks that fire departments mitigate and itโs critical that we pay attention to all the various hazards in our communities,” he said.
Fire leaders say that in addition to keeping up to date with the Fire Safe CT website and social media handles, the social media accounts of municipal agencies can also help residents stay up to date on information specifically relevant to their area.
