Cherry Hill Board of Fire Commissioners Adopts Meeting Schedule

Click on this link to take you to our Public site to view the recently adopted open public meeting schedule of the Cherry Hill Board of Fire Commissioners.

BOFC Resolutuion 07-03-05-01 Authorizing Regular, Agenda and Workshop Meeting Schedule.

Daylight Savings Time - A good time to check your detectors

The men and women of the Chery Hill Fire Fire Department (CHFD) join the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) in asking you to make sure your smoke detectors and Co2 alarms are working properly and have fresh batteries.With daylight savings time coming early this year on Sunday, March 11, 2007, you need to use the time change as an opportunity to develop, share and practice your family fire escape plan.

Let us give you one (or more) very important reasons...

While smoke alarms have helped save countless lives over the past 30 years, research has shown that children younger than 16 may not reliably wake up when the alarm sounds. The fact that children or family members with special needs may sleep through the sound of a smoke alarm must be taken into account when creating your personalized family fire escape plan.

The CHFD, CPSC, USFA, the National Fire Protection Association, International Association of Fire Chiefs, and International Association of Fire Fighters all recommend that families conduct a fire escape drill either late at night or early in the morning. This drill can help parents determine if their children will be awakened by and able to respond to the sound of a smoke alarm.For those children who do not respond, the traditional fire escape plan of everyone simply meeting at a common location outside the home may leave them at risk. Fire Safety educators encourage parents and caregivers to consider the potential of assisting children and others with special needs in getting to a safe location when an alarm activates during sleeping hours.

"No community can put a firefighter on every street corner. Everyone can, however, put a firefighter on duty 24 hours a day and 7 days a week by having and using working smoke alarms in their homes", said USFA Acting Administrator Charlie Dickinson.

"Smoke alarms save lives - everyone should have working alarms on each floor of their house and inside every bedroom", said CPSC Acting Chair Nancy Nord. "So that even more lives can be saved in the future, the fire safety community is currently working to improve smoke alarm audibility for children."

You should also replace your smoke alarms every 10 years since the sensors in these devices degrade due to age and contamination.

In addition to replacing batteries in smoke alarms at least once every year, the LAFD, CPSC and USFA recommend testing smoke alarms monthly. Battery backup is an important consideration for those alarms that are powered by your home’s electrical system.

Between 1999 and 2003, there were an estimated 356,000 unintentionally set residential fires reported to fire departments annually. These fires resulted in an estimated annual average of 2,500 deaths and 14,000 injuries.

CPSC staff came to the following conclusions about children and smoke alarms in a 2004 report on this issue:

- Children under the age of 16 have longer periods of deep sleep compared to adults- Current smoke alarms do not reliably wake children under the age of 16.

- Various home configurations and locations of smoke alarms can limit the transmission of sound throughout the house.

- Interconnected smoke alarms can provide earlier warning of smoke and fire and placing them inside bedrooms may provide improved warning when bedroom doors are closed.

To learn more about fire safety in your home, please visit our website at www.cherryhillfire.org.

Engine22@Chiles-1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7278813@N06/414772323/, originally uploaded by CHFD Info.

Taken by John Axford. Engine 22 using a master stream and a handline to fight this fire.

Press Release - Cherry Hill Firefighters Battle Winds & 2 Alarm Fire

To view the Local FOX News affiliate story, click here.

To read the News article in South Jersey's Courier Post, click here.

To view raw video from this fire, click on this YouTube video.

Photo by Curt Hudson. Just after 6:00 AM Sunday morning, March 4, 2007, Cherry Hill Firefighters responded to a reported building fire at the Chile’s Restaurant, located at 1906 Route 70 West, at the corner of Haddonfield Road. The fire was reported simultaneously by the building’s alarm system and by a security guard on duty across the street at the Wegmans Food Market, who saw smoke from the building.

When firefighters arrived, heavy fire and smoke were visible from the Haddonfield Road side of the building, which houses two restaurants, and firefighters could see fire deep within the Chiles restaurant seating area. Firefighters simultaneously deployed several hose lines to control this fast moving fire. An initial team began to attack the fire inside the restaurant, while other firefighters established a water supply and began to open the building at various access points. Also, a hose line was deployed to protect the Yale School, Yamaha Piano, and Cherry Hill Photo, located directly behind the fire building, and stop the fire from reaching three more important businesses. Because of the reports of heavy fire, a second alarm was ordered bringing additional crews to the scene.

Unknown to the interior crews, the fire had a prolonged time to develop as it had extended inside the walls and up into the attic area. Once the overhead ceiling began to come down on them, firefighters were forced to retreat and begin an exterior attack.

Within minutes of firefighters evacuating the building, the weight of the heavy air conditioning units on the fire damaged roof caused most of the ceiling and roof to collapse on the Chile’s portion of this two restaurant building. At one point, the fire rapidly vented out the side windows of the building, affecting a fire truck and crew that had set up in that area, causing them to relocate.

Crews had already begun setting up for an exterior attack. As the second alarm trucks were arriving, two ladder trucks and a third elevated master stream device called a Squrt, were supplied with water and began to fight the fire. Other master streams, called ground monitors, were set up and began to flow water into various window and door openings.

The high winds out of the west, estimated to be 15 to 20 mph, and gusting higher, fanned this fire throughout the Chile’s portion of the restaurant and into the Porterhouse Steak Restaurant, through the overhead construction. As firefighter’s exterior attack began to take hold, an emergency construction crew with heavy equipment was called in to help open up portions of the exterior walls to allow the master streams to penetrate more effectively. The fire was placed under control at 10:15 am.

The Cherry Hill Fire Marshal’s Office has initially ruled that this fire was most likely caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette on the exterior of the building. This caused a fire to occur in the base of a window sill, extend into the building, up the inside wall and took hold in the attic area. These circumstances also likely led to the fire going undiscovered by the building’s alarm system until conditions became much worse.