Written by: Emma Rose, Communications Manager - Property Maintenance
We work closely with Avon Fire and Rescue to help ensure the safety of our customers and the wider community.
Earlier this month, the fire service used one of our empty homes in Twerton for a training exercise.
No Curo home stays empty for long - when someone moves out of a property, we relet it as soon as possible. When the exercise took place, only 45 of more than 14,000 Curo homes were empty. The pictures below look dramatic, but no damage was done to this property.
The fire fighters put dummies, the same size and weight as adults and children, into the house, and then filled the house with synthetic smoke to simulate a real fire. The artificial smoke has the same effect on the fire fighters’ ability to see as real smoke, but unlike real smoke it’s not dangerous to breathe.
The teams of fire fighters put on breathing equipment, and practised “rescuing” the dummies, getting used to moving around the house with limited ability to see where they were going because of the smoke, and manoeuvring the hoses.
They also practised getting the dummies out of an upstairs window using a ladder.
Curo’s Director of Building Safety, Tom Battersby, said: “Safety is our number one priority and we work closely with Avon Fire & Rescue on training exercises like this one, to help make sure that our customers, and the community, can be as safe as possible in the event of a real emergency.”
You can do an online home fire safety check on the Avon Fire and Rescue website, and you may be able to request a free home fire safety visit from your local fire service.
See our top tips on fire safety at home here.
See the fire safety checks we carry out in our blocks every week.