The City of Cape Town’s safety and security emergency services handed 200 photo-electronic smoke detectors to Tafelsig families on Wednesday April 3.
Between April last year and March this year there were 32 residential fires reported in Tafelsig – 21 at formal residential dwellings and 11 at informal residences.
The photo-electronic smoke detectors were acquired by the City’s fire and rescue service as part of ward allocation funding for the devices.
The smoke detectors use light to detect fire with a light-sensing chamber inside the device. In the chamber, a light emitting diode (LED) light shoots a beam of light in a straight line across the chamber. The alarm detects smoke; when smoke enters the chamber, it deflects the LED light from the straight path into a photo sensor in a different compartment in the same chamber. As soon as light beams hit this sensor, the alarm begins to sound.
Ward 82 councillor Sheval Arendse said statistics show that too many Tafelsig families are affected by fire. “The acquisition of these smoke detectors is not only meant to improve fire safety awareness, but also to safeguard our residents because the devices allow for the early detection of smoke. It means a lower risk of fire-related deaths and injuries, property damage and also limiting the fire from spreading as far or as quickly as it might have otherwise,” he said.
This was the third smoke detector handover in recent months, following similar initiatives in Khayelitsha and Hangberg earlier this year.