SMOKE SIGNALS

Smoke Signals March 2019. Did you know that one in four house fires start in the kitchen?

Making your kitchen fire safe is a really important part of having a fire safe home. Here are some simple things you can do to reduce the risk of a fire starting in the kitchen:

When you’re cooking

• Don't drink and fry. Alcohol is involved in half of all fatal fires. Instead, pre-prepare a meal, get takeaways, or use the microwave. Never attempt to drink alcohol or take medication that makes you sleepy when cooking.

• Don’t leave the room when cooking. If you have to, always turn off the stove first. Unattended cooking is the leading cause of house fires in New Zealand.

• Keep curtains, tea towels, oven mitts and any flammable items well away from the cooking area when you're cooking.

Smoke alarms

Don't install a smoke alarm in your kitchen. Smoke and heat from cooking (and the toaster) can activate the alarm. Smoke alarms shouldn't be installed in the bathroom or laundry either.

You can still protect these areas with a heat alarm/thermal detector. A heat alarm is designed to activate when the room reaches a set temperature. They are useful in places where a smoke alarm would usually give false alarms.

Emergency Call Outs:

• 16 Feb 19 – Bonfire, Days Bay

• 18 Feb 19 – False Alarm, Burdans Gate

• 25 Feb 19 – Alarm Activation, Seaview Wharf

• 2 March 19 – Fire on Beach, Burdans Gate

• 3 March 19 – Fire on Beach, Sunshine Bay

• 8 March 19 – Alarm Activation, Wellesley College

• 13 March 19 – Motor Vehicle Crash, Lowry Bay

• 17 March 19 – Alarm Activation, Rimu St

The Eastbourne Volunteer Fire Brigade is still 11 Firefighters short of its optimum membership which is nearly 50% of the Brigade operational establishment, so please give some serious thought to becoming a Volunteer to help protect your community.

Please call Ross Carroll, Chief Fire Officer (021 648 114), if you think you’ve got what it takes.

News from Point Howard

The Pt Howard Assn held a working bee in midFebruary to freshen up the exterior of the Pt Howard Tennis Pavilion / Play Centre. An enormous amount of thanks to all the volunteers who helped with the wash down and painting, plus a big thank you to Prudence and Lori for a delicious morning tea!

Most Pt Howard residents will have noticed a huge increase in scrap metal noise over the last few weeks since SIMS Pacific Metals have changed their method of loading. Scrap metal is now dropped into containers end on from a 7-10m height, resulting in huge crashes which certainly exceed the legal noise limits. The problem however is that the by-laws work on the average noise over a minute, so even this highly intrusive crashing is apparently within the acceptable decibel limit. The Pt Howard Assn are now working with the Eastbourne Community Board (ECB) to petition the Hutt City Council (HCC) for a change in this ridiculous by-law which permits such a massive noise intrusion from Seaview into our adjacent residential area. We thank the ECB for their support in this matter.

The annual walk around with the ECB and HCC went well. One of the items raised was the degradation to the footpath between 13 and 17 Howard Road. This has now been fixed by HCC, and the Pt Howard Assn kindly asks that residents and visitors to Pt Howard to please park on the road and not on the footpath. Parking on the footpath not only damages it, but forces pedestrians out onto a road with two blind corners. There have been numerous near misses with vulnerable road users in this area of the hill, and we wish to reduce the risk by having all footpaths on the hill available to pedestrians at all times.

pthowardassn@gmail.com