Smoke alarms and social alarms increase fire safety

Several municipalities in Sweden are currently working collaboratively with the local fire & rescue service to find solutions to preventing fires. One good way is to install smoke alarms that are connected to social alarms and raise an alert at an alarm receiving centre. Västervik Municipality has taken the initiative to link the system to save more lives. A collaborative project between the Fire & Rescue Service and the Social Services seeks to provide all of the municipality’s social alarms with a system for fire detection. Careium met some of the people involved in the project to hear about and discuss their experiences.

How does it work?

The Careium optical smoke detector can be connected to all Careium social alarms and alarm systems. When a smoke detector is activated, a priority alarm is sent to the alarm receiving centre, who then contacts the user. This makes it possible to check the situation and determine whether or not a call-out is required. The person may also not hear or be able to react to a fire alarm without outside support. Lives can be saved, but unnecessary responses by the emergency services can also be avoided by freeing them from false alarms for real emergencies. 

“The alarm system lets us determine the situation quickly, which is crucial,” says Sven Tholén, Development Manager at the social services department in Västervik.

Advantages

In addition to increasing a feeling of security among the elderly and their relatives, these measures also contribute to ensuring that the general safety of homes can be reviewed when firefighters are installing smoke detectors. 

“We can't stress enough how satisfied we are that we’ve achieved this. This is one of the most reassuring and best initiatives Västervik Municipality has implemented to avoid the accidents and fatal fires that are so difficult to tackle,” says Jakob Dahlqvist.