Brigade uses grant to gift smoke alarms

Firefighter Chris Stewart with a smoke alarm.

The Wanganui Fire Service has been given nearly 300 smoke alarms to distribute as part of its 150th jubilee.

The brigade received $7000 from the New Zealand Community Trust and has used it to install smoke alarms in houses in "at-risk" areas, station officer Shane Dudley said.

They have been installing them in the Kaiwhaiki area and will soon decide on another area to install smoke alarms.

Mr Dudley said when the brigade normally installed smoke alarms in people's homes, they could only install one.

But with the number they had been given, they were able to install two or three per house in the areas they recommended, which were bedrooms and living areas.

"Rather than just giving out one and saying, 'Here's the minimum', we're doing what we recommend," Mr Dudley said.

"Why not get the community a bit safer?"

So far they have installed between 120 and 140 smoke alarms. He said the money was given to them to support part of their jubilee celebrations.

"We got a little bit of what we needed and a lot for the community."

The jubilee is coming up on Queen's Birthday weekend and will include 45 fire trucks driving down Victoria Ave.