By Leon Gray-Lockhart
THE Central Taranaki Safe Community Trust and Partners Group are launching the second part of the Stratford Community Taranaki Electricity Trust (TET) Home Safety Project from this week.
The first part of the project was undertaken between January and August 2008 and saw 11,960 smoke alarms fitted into 2607 homes throughout central Taranaki, together with a range of home safety information provided to educate and assist families to become safer at home.
Now, the second part of the project is set to get underway and four local people have been employed to survey around 800 of the total 2607 homes involved in the first part.
"One of the criteria of the TET funding for the project was to undertake a survey to ascertain the value of the project," said project chair, Pauline James, "the value of completing the project with a survey will determine its worth for other like-minded organisations who are already looking to use the central Taranaki project as a 'how to' guide for their communities."
The survey will cover peoples' understanding of fire safety in their own homes, looking at whether those involved have stayed aware of the importance of keeping their smoke alarms clean and fully functioning, with regular checks and battery changes. The survey will also cover understandings of fire escape plans and the knowledge that people have of slips, trips and falls in the home.
"We're optimistic that people have taken on the messages of the Home Safety Project," said Matt Crabtree, fire safety officer for the New Zealand Fire Service in Taranaki, and supervisor of the project, "but, it will be interesting to see what the survey says."
Rod Zehnder and Joan Watson are two of the four people conducting the surveys, and were part of the initial team associated with the first part of the project.
"We hope to see that some people associated with the project have changed their home safety habits," said Joan, "I expect we'll find a mixture of people some will be very aware, others not so much."
"We told people about some of the hazards in the home during the first part," said Rod, "reminding them about the importance of turning off electric blankets and TVs, and not overloading sockets. Hopefully, people have remembered as people were very receptive at the time."
Joining Joan and Rod will be Michelle Kenny and Debbie Port, who are looking forward to being involved.
"I'm really looking forward to getting out, meeting people and seeing how they're feeling about the project," said Debbie.
The surveying team will work from the Stratford Fire Station under the guidance of Matt until Friday, June 19. After this, the data from the survey will be collated, and analysed.
"The feedback will be helpful to other communities thinking about their own home safety projects. Stratford's project is already viewed as something of a model project, so the data we gather will hopefully confirm it," said Matt.
Home Safety Project shifts phase
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