DOVER — After a close call at a recent three-alarm fire in late December, the city’s fire chief reminded residents to have an evacuation plan and leave their residences when the fire alarm goes off, no matter the temperature. And close the door behind them.
When fire crews arrived at Edgar Bois Terrace on the frigid night of Dec. 30, they spotted people inside an apartment they thought were trapped, said Dover Fire Chief Eric Hagman.
When firefighters arrived at the apartment, they realized the occupants weren’t trapped.
“They just needed to be rapidly evacuated,” Hagman said.
His fear is that if two or three minutes had passed, they could have been trapped. The occupants hadn’t left even though the fire alarm was ringing and the building was filling with smoke.
While the occupants were safely evacuated, it diverted scarce resources from fighting the fire, Hagman said.
It’s not the first time that’s happened in the past couple of months. Hagman said a similar situation occurred at a fire at Old English Village in early November.
“I’m very aware that many times fire alarms are false,” said the chief. “But when the alarm goes off, it’s time to leave.”
Hagman stressed that everyone should have a plan to evacuate in all weather. In the winter, have a warm coat by the door, know where your keys are and leave the building when the alarm goes off, he said. If possible, stay warm in a car until it is safe to return.
Hagman also stressed that it is also critical to close the door of an apartment or house when evacuating as open doors allow a fire to spread more quickly. He cited the deadly apartment building blaze in New York City that killed 12 people just days before the Edgar Bois Terrace fire. The fire there started in a first-floor apartment and when the occupants evacuated, they left the door open. That more than anything contributed to the fire spreading, according to news reports.
Lastly, with the pile of snow from recent storms in recent days, he asks that those who are able, to adopt a nearby fire hydrant to shovel out. The hydrants will get cleared eventually, as crews from Community Services and the Fire Department are shoveling them out. But with more than 800 hydrants in the city, the work can’t be done instantaneously.
Even though all the hydrants have GPS locators installed, when one is buried in a snow bank, it can still take four or five minutes to locate it and clear it out, Hagman said. And those four or five minutes could be better used elsewhere during a fire.