Okotoks’ fire chief has been busy making the rounds at the town’s senior complexes to ensure the emergency measures at the facilities are sound.

Ken Thevenot has spent a lot of time in recent months working with seniors and his own firefighters to prepare response plans just in case a fire breaks out in one of the facilities.

“We’re trying to hit all the seniors’ residences to make sure there are plans in place, not only for the residents and the staff that work there but for our members,” he said. “It’s to make sure we all know what’s expected or what’s going to happen if an incident does happen so everybody knows each other’s goals.”

Okotoks deputy fire chiefs Jim Smith, left and Rob Mackenzie discuss details of a fire training exercise at Calvanna Village last month with condo board president Don Pearse.

He first worked with the staff and residents at Sandstone Lodge and has held monthly fire drills at the lodge since the summer.

He said it’s critical to be prepared and the fire drill program has been successful.

“I don’t want to be doing this for the first time at 2 a.m. in the morning when we’ve never evacuated the building with them. That’s not the time to practice when there’s an incident,” he said.

The lodge was cleared out in just under five minutes in the first drill.

Over the winter months, he has asked residents to meet in the cafeteria area rather than to leave the building in cold weather.

Since he started working with the lodge, he has also been working with the Heritage Heights facility across the parking lot on fire preparedness. Both facilities now share mustering points in the event of a fire.

“If something happens at Heritage Heights they go to Sandstone Lodge and vice-versa,” he said.

Thevenot recently added another facility to his plans with a training exercise last month at Calvanna Village, a residential complex by the Okotoks Centennial Arena for residents aged 50 and over.

He said the event on Jan. 19 wasn’t a full-scale fire drill. The fire alarm did not sound and he used it as an opportunity for firefighters to walk through the buildings and get a lay of the land to be able to develop response plans for the complex.

“That particular day was just training for us to go through the different levels of the multi-family dwelling,” he said.

He still wants to do a full-scale fire drill at the site.

He also wants the complex to set out mustering points for residents to meet at in the event of a fire.

He said one of the biggest differences between Sandstone Lodge and Calvanna Village is the lodge has staff working in the building 24 hours a day and Calvanna is not an assisted living facility.

While some residents will be more mobile than others, he said firefighters are cognizant of the fact there may be some people who will need more help evacuating the building.

“It’s good for us to recognize that they are 50 plus, they’re not open to all families, so we know that our focus down there is for people who are 50-plus years old and we need to be cognizant of that when we arrive there,” he said.

The condo board at Calvanna approached the department about doing the drill.

Don Pearse, condo board president, said it was a good exercise to go through in the building.

“It went really well,” he said. “They did such an efficient job, they’ve come up with a few things we might want to look at. It’s not onerous, it’s just little things the average person wouldn’t know about.”

One recommendation was to put signs on both sides of stairwell doors so people will know which floor they’re on if the building is filled with smoke. He said they are forming an emergency plan that will include a meeting place in the event of an emergency.

He said he hopes the drill will raise awareness among residents about their neighbours and to let the fire department know about residents with reduced mobility.

0 Click Here to 'Like' this post

 Email This Post  Print This Post