Riley Ostrowski had a more eventful day then most kids his age, as he was appointed as Calgary’s Junior Fire Chief.
After arriving in the “shotgun” seat of a fire hydrant, Ostrowski was presented with a fire helmet and a certificate honouring his position during a ceremony at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Fire Chief Steve Dongworth presented Ostrowski with the gifts and co-cut the ceremonial cake.
Since 2016, the Junior Fire Chief has been an annual part of the Calgary Fire Department’s Fire Prevention Week.
As part of his duties promoting this year’s Fire Prevention Week theme, “Battery fires happen anywhere, anytime,” Ostrowski shared three key ways to prevent battery fires.
“One, don’t charge lithium batteries on anything squishy (like couches or pillows). Two, don’t throw it away in a garbage or recycling and three, only charge lithium batteries with the equipment they came with,” he said.
Ostrowski, who is eight years old, said that his favourite part of the day was that he was the centre of attention.
Sharon Howland, leader of program management with the City of Calgary, waste and recycling services, said that recent increases of battery-caused fires have been due to more devices, including built-in batteries.
“Whether it’s your electric toothbrush or your cordless vacuum or your cell phone or your e-reader, it’s just all that tech, all those gadgets, that only have a certain lifespan. Oftentimes, when it dies, it’s not a replaceable battery, and you just go to chuck it out, and you just go out to back your house or out front, you pick a bin and you throw it in, thinking that you’re doing the right thing,” she said.
“But with lithium ion batteries, any batteries, really, whether it’s single use or rechargeable, we need you to keep them out of any of your bins, because they have energy stored in them, and as soon as they get compacted in the truck or by the equipment at our facilities, they can start on fire.”
Howland said that more than 75 battery-caused fires have happened in garbage facilities like landfills and sorting facilities.
“It even happens in our collection trucks themselves, which you can imagine, is very scary for our drivers when they see smoke coming out of their truck and they need to pull over and deal with that immediately,” Howland said.
Instead of throwing away batteries, the city has announced a new partnership with Call2Recycle, with more than 100 battery recycling drop off bins around the city.
“There’s over 100 partner locations through places like Home Depot, London Drugs, Calgary Co-op and then there’s the city drop off programs, our three eco centers and all of our household hazardous waste depots, which are co-located with Calgary fire at a number of designated fire halls,” Howland said.
