A grateful Barnsley resident has thanked the fire service after smoke alarms they fitted alerted her to a blaze in her neighbour’s home.

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue carried out a Home Safety Check at Susan Hey’s home on Crompton Avenue, Barnsley, fitting smoke alarms upstairs and downstairs in the property, as well as offering safety advice around common causes of fires.

Two months later, at approximately 5am, the smoke alarms awoke Susan and alerted her to a fire in an adjoining property. She was able to call 999 who advised her to leave the property, whilst crews arrived to investigate. Luckily there were no injuries and there was no fire damage to her home.

Susan Hey said “South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue offer a fantastic service- there’s no excuse not to have working smoke alarms fitted. The firefighters who came round to fit my smoke alarms were so lovely and polite – it really doesn’t take long at all. Had I not had them fitted, the outcome of this whole situation could have been very different. I haven’t stopped telling all my friends about the importance of having a working smoke alarm and testing them weekly.”

Station Manager in Community Safety, Spencer Rowland said: “This is a great example of prevention work at its best –smoke alarms allow for early detection of fires before they have devastating effects. But smoke alarms can only raise the alarm if they are working, so it’s vitally important people test them regularly to give them the peace of mind that they are ready in case the worst does happen.”

For more information on fire safety check out the rest of our website or for free reminders to test your smoke alarms visit pressthebutton.co.uk.

A major new partnership to help tackle dementia related house fires in South Yorkshire has officially launched.

The South Yorkshire Dementia Action Alliances won funding from South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Authority’s funding scheme, the Stronger Safer Communities Reserve. The money is being used to support the ‘Dementia Fire and Home Safety Project’.

Under the scheme, coordinators in each of South Yorkshire’s four districts will promote fire safety to a range of organisations working with people living with dementia and their carers, in a bid to reduce the risk of fire and the associated consequences.

Part of the co-ordinators’ role includes promoting the fire service’s home safety check service, whereby trained fire service staff visit people’s homes and talk to them about preventing fires and other accidents and fit smoke alarms where needed. They will also encourage organisations to sign up to South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue’s ‘Safe and Well’ partnership.

The project will also work with the fire service on a safety campaign specifically targeting those living with dementia and their carers, including a number of roadshows across the county.

More than 15,000 people across South Yorkshire have been diagnosed with dementia – with thousands more thought to be undiagnosed.  Dementia is known to be a major factor involved in accidental house fires and fire related injuries and deaths.

Officers believe the project will benefit the fire service by providing a vital link with one of its key target groups in terms of vulnerability to fire.

Area Manager Steve Helps, said: “In the last decade, the fire service has helped to make South Yorkshire safer than it has been at any time in its history in terms of house fires and fire related deaths and injuries. But we believe we can play a much wider role in terms of tackling some of the big health challenges our country faces in the future”.

“This project is the perfect illustration of that aspiration, where we use the coordinated efforts and expertise of those at the frontline of dementia care to improve the lives of one of the most vulnerable groups in society.”

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue is also a member of the Yorkshire & Humber Dementia Alliance, which is committed to tackling the growing issue of dementia within our communities.

Hundreds of its staff have also signed up to become Dementia Friends – a Government backed initiative which teaches people a little bit more about what it’s like to live with dementia, and then turns that understanding into action.

The Stronger Safer Communities Reserve fund saw dozens of registered charities, community organisations and partner agencies come forward and apply for grants from the £2 million fund, which had been set aside from the Authority’s reserves.

Groups were able to bid for as little as £5,000 or as much as £150,000 to support projects which reduce injuries, save lives and make South Yorkshire safer. Key objectives for the fund include prioritising the most vulnerable, collaboration and data sharing.

South Yorkshire Dementia Action Alliance won £149,000 to support the project over two years.

Firefighters have taken part in a major training exercise in Sheffield to test their response to an incident involving the city’s tram network.

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue worked with Stagecoach Supertram on the live training scenario, which involved a casualty being trapped under one of the vehicles.

Herdings Park tram stop was closed for several hours for the exercise, which also involved paramedics from Yorkshire Ambulance Service.

Station manager Darren Perrot, said: “We’d like to thank the public for their understanding in allowing us to close a small part of the tram network in Sheffield for a few hours so we could complete this important training exercise. We’re also extremely grateful to Stagecoach Supertram for making the exercise as realistic as possible and providing some vital technical input on the day.

“Our firefighters are ready to respond to a huge number of different incident types, from fires to road traffic collisions. We issue lots of guidance to our crews about the different sorts of scenarios they might come across in the line of duty, but really the best way of preparing our response is to test it out for real.”

Katie Arthur, Safety Manager for Stagecoach Supertram said, “We are grateful to our passengers for their patience during this operation that involved staff, both at depot and on site working with colleagues from South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue.  Safety is always our number one priority and exercises like these are vital in enabling us to test our emergency responses and gain crucial experience of working with our emergency service partners.”

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue is helping to reduce road deaths in Moldova by donating equipment used to cut people free from road crashes.

The service has given its old Zumro cutting gear to a UK fire service humanitarian charity working to in the country improve survival rates from road traffic collisions.

In 2012 there were 2,712 recorded road traffic collisions in the Republic of Moldova, causing 441 deaths. This makes the country’s fatality rate for RTCs more than 10 times that of the UK’s.

Factors contributing to this are the length of time for rescue assistance to reach incidents, a lack of necessary equipment to respond effectively to incidents, and gaps in knowledge of those responding to incidents.

Operation Florian is a project created with an aim to combat this and help bring down the number of fatalities. Fire services across the UK regularly donate equipment and provide training to help achieve this.

Assistant Chief Fire Officer Martin Blunden, said: “This is a great cause that I feel really passionate about. The road death casualty rates in Moldova are unacceptably high and I think we have a duty in the developed world to share learning with firefighters there to help save lives. People should be safe in the knowledge that emergency services are there to support them in a time of need, regardless of where in the world they live. It makes perfect sense to donate equipment like this to help support that aim.”