The State Emergency Service named the five main causes of fires for the current year
On December 10, a briefing of the Deputy Chief of the Department of Fire Safety — Head of the Department of Preventive Work of the Department of Emergency Prevention of the Emergency Situations of the State Emergency Situations of Ukraine Oleksandr Chekrygin and Deputy Director of the Department for Protection of Children's Rights and Ensuring Equality Standards of the National Social Service of Ukraine was held in the State Emergency Service of Ukraine Volodymyr Vovka on the prevention of fires and deaths in the housing sector of the country.
The participants showed the representatives of the media the actual statistics of the occurrence of fires in the dwellings of citizens, the deaths of people on them, and also told how to protect their lives from fire.
Thus, according to Oleksandr Chekrygin, since the beginning of the year in Ukraine there have been almost 26 thousand fires in houses and residential buildings, as a result of which more than 1 thousand 500 people died, including more than 30 children.
Among the main causes of fires: violation of the rules for the installation and operation of electrical equipment, violation of the rules for the installation and operation of furnace heating, as well as careless handling of fire. The speaker clarified that most often in the dwellings of citizens there are fires due to overload of the power grid, the use of extension cords, in particular homemade ones, as well as due to the neglect of the furnace in the case of heating buildings using furnace heating. “Very often fires in the private sector arise precisely because the furnaces are not serviced and cleaned in time,” Oleksandr Chekrygin emphasized and added that it is categorically impossible to leave children alone in a house with a working stove. He recalled the main actions in the event of a fire, called to report a fire on time at the number “101” and advised to have a fire extinguisher in every family.
In turn, the representative of the National Social Service of Ukraine stressed that the problem of fires in the housing sector is of great social importance. Volodymyr Vovk noted that this problem most often arises where we are talking about the most vulnerable categories of the population that need constant attention of the state — young children, the elderly and families who find themselves in difficult living conditions. According to him, there are three components of the joint work of public authorities to prevent the death of people in fires: identifying the problem, assessing it and ultimately solving the problem. As an example, Volodymyr Vovk mentioned a case when the issue of returning children to the biological family was considered, but the conditions found by social services workers did not contribute to this. We are talking, in particular, about the lack of conditions for cooking, when the only alternative in the family was to make a fire.
“Unfortunately, the history of modern legislation on the protection of children is written by the children themselves with their lives,” the specialist summed up.
Separately, on the example of fires in private homes for the elderly, he called on the public to check the belonging of each such institution to the sphere of state control. After all, in the case when such a house does not even have an appropriate license, it is impossible to guarantee the safety of people living there.
In conclusion, the participants of the briefing proved information about the measures taken to prevent the occurrence of fires in the dwellings of citizens. This includes joint raiding of settlements, distribution of monuments with fire safety rules in places with mass attendance of people, in educational, cultural, medical institutions, public transport, etc. In addition, preventive work is also carried out on a regular basis with parents and children.
Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine
