By KAREN MANGNELL – Auckland stuff.co.nz

The Fire Service is putting new faces on its education materials to rejuvenate its fire safety campaign.

Adults get one booklet on home fire safety while children get their own material with new Firewise faces Flint and Amber.

Counties Manukau fire education coordinator George Stephens says the targeted materials should be more effective than the old fire safety booklet aimed at the whole family.

The kids’ booklet is “very attractive”, he says, and one Manukau school has ordered 520 of the free copies.

Mr Stephens says the new materials, including leaflets on home sprinklers and a fire safety checklist, are timely given the bad run of fire deaths this year.

So far 28 people in New Zealand have died in fires compared with 13 last year.

“We’re not happy about it because the majority were preventable.”

Many of the fatal fires were in homes that had smoke alarms which weren’t working, he says.

Injury Free Counties Manukau groups are doing a good job with fire safety education, he says, and the district is below the national average for fires.

But he fears too many residents have become complacent about fire risks, especially the over-60s who are a high-risk group.

Mr Stephens says the value of working smoke alarms has been well proven with house fire callouts down from about 10,000 in 1996 to around 3500 last year.

“But people are becoming so lethargic about maintaining smoke alarms.”

It’s not just in the poorer areas either, he says, with some wealthy homeowners removing smoke alarms because they’re unsightly.

Too often people are only shocked into taking fire safety seriously after a fire in their own or a neighbour’s home, Mr Stephens says.

“We need to get over the attitude that it’s never going to happen to me.”

Injury Free Counties Manukau coordinator Lauren Van Coller says the new education materials will help local groups tailor the fire safety message to either child or adult audiences.

The new Flint and Amber kids’ characters are especially good because they “relate to kids more”, she says.

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