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Wednesday, January 24, 2007 · Page 5 Disabling a smoke alarm is against the law H ave you ever had your smoke alarm go off while you were cooking? You are not alone. Smoke alarm activation due to cooking activities or even steam from the shower is a common occurrence. In the fire service we call this a nuisance alarm. Regrettably, some people deal with the problem by removing or by disconnecting the batteries, thereby disabling the smoke alarm. This is not only dangerous, but it is against the law. Fortunately, there are simple, practical alternatives that can help end or reduce annoying nuisance alarms without compromising your safety. A new provincial campaign called Make it Stop! is designed to educate Ontario residents about solutions to annoying nuisance alarms. Key messages about nuisance alarms. · If frequent nuisance alarms are a problem, do not remove the battery. Disabling a smoke alarm is against the law. There are options you can try to help stop or reduce nuisance alarms, without endangering your safety. may be less prone · Start with to activate due to basic housekeepcooking activities. ing, such as keep· Keep smoke ing burners and alarms in the best ovens clean and possible working emptying the order by vacuumcrumb tray in the ing at least annutoaster, to help ally and replacing alarms that are stop nuisance alarms at the more than 10 years old. source. According to · Try moving Essex Fire Chief Ed Pillon statistics from the the smoke alarm. Ontario Fire Sometimes mova smoke alarm just a few centimetres is Marshal's Office, from 1995 to 2004, 79 ing enough to significantly reduce nuisance percent of homes where fire departments attended a fire had a smoke alarm. alarms. Avoid installing smoke alarms in However, the smoke alarm operated in less kitchens or directly outside bathrooms. than half (47 percent) of those fires. · Install smoke alarms with a hush feature One of the main reasons that smoke that will temporarily silence the alarm and alarms do not operate is that the battery is then automatically reset itself. dead or has been removed. People fre· Replace ionization alarms located near quently remove batteries from their smoke kitchens with photoelectric alarms. They commentary alarms to stop annoying nuisance alarms. Every home in Ontario must have a working smoke alarm on every storey and outside all sleeping areas. Failure to comply with the Fire Code smoke alarm requirements could result in a ticket for $235 or a fine of up to $50,000 for individuals or $100,000 for corporations. There is a good reason why smoke alarms are loud and persistent: they are intended to get your attention and they have saved countless lives by alerting people to fire. Don't put your family at risk by disabling the smoke alarms. There are other options. As Fire Chief of the Essex Fire Service, I would like to encourage all residents of our community to visit the campaign website ­ www.makeitstop.ca ­ to learn more about nuisance alarm causes and solutions. Residents are also welcome to contact the fire department at 519-776-6476 to discuss their particular smoke alarm issues. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Pensioner against new arena I was at the council meeting in regards to the new arena Jan. 15. I spoke up and told the mayor and councillors that I am on a fixed income pension and that I am speaking for seniors like me all over the municipality and we simply can't afford it. When you live with a basic pension, you live on a tight budget. Agnes (Nan) Cameron Essex Essex Area Food Bank grateful for support The Essex Area Food Bank, the Board of Directors, all the volunteers and our clients are very grateful for the support given to us throughout 2006 and, especially, during the holiday season. Thank you to the EssexHarrow Goodfellows, K of C, all of the businesses, churches and service clubs, as well as legions and individuals who contributed to our cause. We appreciated your help in supporting our Polar Bear Splash, which raised about $30,000, holding can drives for us, donating turkeys or gifts to our Christmas program, helping with our advertising or transportation needs, or however else you showed that you care. The needs of the food bank continue to grow. This year we filled more than 200 Christmas baskets with food and gifts for the needy in our community. We were able to do this because of your generous donations. Eileen Clifford Founder and Coordinator Telephone sales raise concerns This week one of the most disturbing headlines was the breach of customer security at two large retail stores in Canada. Following this news, came the revelation that the CIBC had also lost customer information. During this same week, I received a call from a woman who indicated that she was calling me on behalf of the Windsor Star. She proceeded to offer me a rate reduction for a limited time on a subscription to the paper. I decided to go ahead and accept her offer. She then told me that she was handing the call over to her supervisor. Another woman came on the line and verified the subscription offer and my address. She then asked me for my bank account number so that my account could be debited monthly for this subscription. I told her that I would not give out that information over the phone. Next she told me that the only other way that I could pay for this subscription was to give her my credit card number which would be debited monthly. I told her that I would pay the full amount. She said that that option was not available and that my credit card would have to be debited each month. This made no sense to me at all and I told her to send me a bill and that I would pay it. She informed me that no bills would be sent and that I would have to give her my credit card number over the phone for my payments to be made monthly. Of course I declined her offer at this point. For one thing, I was not even sure that this was the Windsor Star. She could have been any fraud artist. I have never heard of a company declining payment in full, nor have I heard of a company doing business without sending an invoice for payment. The police are always informing us not to give out information over the phone especially to unsolicited calls. Is this how the Windsor Star is doing business now? If so, they did not get mine. Bonnie Popov Essex Dion's doomsday warning irresponsible I find the comments of Stéphane Dion regarding a doomsday global warming scenario to be irresponsible, disturbing and misleading. His comments are not very factual and border on political extremism. Is he for real claiming that "Canada will cut megatonnes of emissions, but we will make megatonnes of money," as he told the Toronto Board of Trade and the Economic Club of Toronto recently? Most climatologists and atmospheric scientists have basically debunked global warming rhetoric by certain political and media groups. The same groups who are now claiming devastating global warming (a concept that came to the fore in the 1980's) were claiming the onset of another ice age in the 1970's. Research has shown that there is a moderate, natural cycle that has occurred over the past 400,000 years of temperature history that raises temperatures at the latitude of Paris and New York by about three degrees Celsius, and then lowers it by the same amount. These cycles averaged about 1500 years in length. The atmospheric gases, nitrogen (78.03 percent) and oxygen (20.99 percent) make up almost 99 percent of our atmosphere. All other gases (including carbon dioxide) make up about one percent. Mankind is responsible for about 0.28 percent. Canada is only responsible for 2 percent of the 0.28 percent carbonic cycle. If Canada were to honours its Kyoto Protocol commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent, the result would be a paltry reduction of 0.06 percent in worldwide emissions. Meanwhile the biggest polluters ­ China, India, the U.S. and many other countries ­ are exempt. R.A. 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