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Fire Safety Awareness Amongst Migrant Communities

Fire Brigades up and down the UK are extremely concerned about the lack of fire safety awareness that exists amongst the communities of migrants, who are continuing to flock into the country. Often, the migrants may speak little or no English and due to the fact that they do not qualify for social housing, they regularly live in houses of multiple occupancy, which may be unlicensed and exceptionally overcrowded.

This fact has been recognised by all fire and rescue services and attempts are being made to communicate a better understanding of the dangers these migrants are facing. A lot of migrants have come to the UK from Eastern European countries and they exist on very low wages. This means that they end up sharing a property with a large number of other individuals, in order to ensure that their rent will be affordable to them.

In February 2008, Peter Holland, the Chief Constable of the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, spoke out about this problem. He stressed that he was seriously concerned about the potential for multiple deaths.

This is a problem that does not appear to be restricted to certain areas of the country. Migrants have moved to most parts of the UK and this should certainly be recognised as a national dilemma. Local Authorities would need to ensure that they carry out regular inspections of such private dwellings, to ensure that they are not being so dangerously overcrowded. This will always be a problem, however, as most Local Authority Environmental Health Departments are already very over stretched. It is not unusual to find that there are only a few officers to deal with the whole of a district or borough. Fire Brigades will also be facing the same sort of logistical and financial restrictions.

In some areas, literature has been prepared and sent out, in the different relevant languages. But it does not really seem to be having much of an impact and there are still far too many houses of multiple occupancy that pose massive potential risks.

Fire safety is an issue that must be addressed and if it means that the Government are going to have to put more money into this area and tougher legislation in place, then so be it! It may be a good idea to have native speakers pay a visit on migrant homes to offer them advice on how they can stay safe and minimise the risk for a potential fire.

Of course, all such homes must be fitted with smoke alarms as standard. This should go further and Local Authorities should insist that their migrant communities are not living in such dangerous housing conditions and action must be taken against the private landlords to act as a deterrent in the future. The apathetic attitude that has tended to exist thus far, is just a recipe for disaster and sooner or later, some lives that should have been protected, may be lost unnecessarily.

Article Source: http://www.bo-knows.com

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