VUGD Senior Inspector Sandra Vējiņa, who is also the initiator of this information campaign, explained that while there has been a requirement for all homes to have smoke detectors in place for over three years, people are not always aware that they are needed for their own safety.
“When we look at the statistics, we see that when we go to the residential sector, which is private houses and apartments, the smoke detector is only installed in every third home, the smoke detector in every home should have been there for almost four years now,” Vējiņa said.
On the idea of the campaign, she explained: “We had these smoke detectors left over from another campaign that didn't have that much responsiveness from the population, so we chose to gift these smoke detectors at this time of year.”
Campaign activities will only be carried out with the consent of the homeowner or residents. The installation of smoke detectors will be carried out only in the presence of the owner and by coordinating the location. It should be added that detectors will be a gift, so free.
Sandra Vējiņa also emphasized that people forget to replace batteries, so one of the tasks of this information campaign will be to help check the performance of detectors.
“The problem is that these smoke detectors were installed by most in 2019 [as it became a mandatory requirement in 2020] and it's been years and there are people who haven't thought about changing batteries, so they're installed, but they're no longer performing that function,” Vējiņa said.
112 smoke detectors have been allocated for distribution in each region during the outreach campaign.
