News
Alarm over preventable death
Hundreds of people will continue to die needlessly and thousands will be injured in domestic fires each year, because of government penny-pinching over the installation of domestic smoke alarms, according to safety experts.
The Smoke Detectors Bill, which has just completed all its parliamentary stages, will make the installation of smoke detectors in all new homes mandatory from next year. But it will leave people most in need of smoke alarms least likely to get them, healthmatters has been told.
Fire deaths currently run at the rate of about 700 a year, and most occur in older properties.
An earlier bill that would have required smoke alarms to be fitted in all homes fell when government supporters maneuvered to prevent it being debated in Parliament.
That bill, the Domestic Smoke Alarms Bill, was carefully targeted and would have allowed three quarters of a million poorer people to get free smoke alarms.
It would also have given tenants in the private rented sector the right to go to local fire authorities to force their landlords to install alarms.
New homes add only about one percent a year to the housing stock, Richard Bate, Assistant Director of the National Housing and Town Planning Council told healthmatters. ‘In other words, you would have to wait at least 100 years for the new bill to get fire alarms in all homes.’
‘An estimated 300 lives could be saved every year if alarms were fitted in all homes’, he said. ‘The government continues to have blood on its hand.’
Concern at the government’s failure to make the installation of smoke alarms compulsory in all properties came to a head earlier this summer when a domestic fire in Strathclyde killed a mother and her five children.
The Chief Fire Officer for Strathclyde, John Jameson, said that no lives would have been lost had the property been fitted with properly maintained smoke alarms.
Mr Jameson also accepted that in poorer areas, such as where the fire occurred, families might need financial assistance to install alarms. ‘Fire and deprivation go hand in hand’, he said.
Brian Wilson, MP for Cunninghame North, in whose constituency the fire occurred, expressed the exasperation of many MPs at the government’s reluctance to make the installation of alarms more widespread when he said. ‘What is the logic in opposing the installation of these devices in old properties when there is support for them in new ones?’
Commenting on the strategy of the Strathclyde fire, Mr Bate told healthmatters ‘These deaths need not have occurred. The government is letting people die for the £5-10 cost of smoke alarms, because they are not a priority for poor people.’
Disquiet has also been expressed at the government assisting the passage of the Smoke Detectors Bill when it was known that changes to building regulations were about to make their installation in new homes compulsory.
Tory MP for York Conal Gregory, the sponsor the Smoke Detectors Bill and also the earlier Domestic Smoke Alarm Bill, is known to have one of the smallest Conservative minorities in the north of England.
- Fire Brigades attended 356,000 fires in 1988 and dwelling fires accounted for 18% of these. The total number of non-fatal casualties in 1988 was 13,376.
