DATE: Friday, September 26, 1997            TAG: 9709260006
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   33 lines

FIRE SAFETY: A NORFOLK EMBARRASSMENT FIREMEN NEED TO REVIEW AND MEMORIZE FIRE-PREVENTION GUIDELINES

Nearly every responsible person - certainly all schoolchildren - knows that smoke detectors save lives. But in order to function, smoke detectors need to be equipped with fresh batteries.

Fire safety experts recommend testing the batteries in smoke detectors twice a year - once in the fall when clocks are turned back and again in the spring when the clocks are turned ahead. School students everywhere are told to remind Mom and Dad when it's time to check the detectors.

Oddly enough, one of Norfolk's newest fire stations had both dead and weak batteries in several of its smoke detectors when it was inspected in August.

The public needs to ask how this happened and whether it is a symptom of a deeper attitude of negligence by city workers and agencies.

A fire station with eight violations of the fire code ought to be a source of enormous embarrassment to the city of Norfolk. Wasn't anyone bothering to press those little red test buttons on the smoke detectors at Norfolk's fire Station 7?

A news story this week reported that a city inspector in August documented a shocking array of simple fire-prevention violations in Station 7. Among the violations were a lack of fire extinguishers, an uninspected sprinkler system, filters in the kitchen range needing replacement, missing ceiling tiles, substandard fire extinguishers and a loose mounting on a fire-suppression pull device.

There is no excuse for this sort of negligence, and it should never happen again.

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