Batavia Fire Department hopes new app gets people to check home's safety
The Batavia Fire Department wants you to do a safety check on your house.
For years, it has offered to send firefighters to do a 52-point assessment. Can your address numbers be seen from the street? Do you have oversized electrical fuses? Are there working smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors?
But fewer people than it wants take advantage of the free offer. So Battalion Chief John Lucas has developed an app, hoping that ease of mobile device use will spur people.
Officials are also enlisting the town's children to spread the use of the app. The fire department will tell fourth-graders about the app during their annual home-safety instruction class, and give them a handout with the QR code.
Chief Randy Deicke said Tuesday he believes people have been reluctant to let firefighters in their homes. The app may assuage the privacy concerns.
To download the app, visit the "Home Safety Survey" on the department's Web page, and take a photo of the QR code on the right.
Deicke announced the app during a midyear presentation to Batavia aldermen about the department's activities.
There, he reported the number of calls to lift uninjured fallen people continues to increase, and that Batavia has the most assisted-lift calls of any agency in the Tri-City Ambulance cooperative. In 2018, it responded to 247 such calls.
Typically, the calls are handled by a three-person crew that takes a fire engine to the call - the ambulances are too busy with medical calls, he said. The firefighters use a fire engine in case the truck is called out for a fire emergency.
He said the Naperville Fire Department has a crew and passenger vehicle dedicated to lift calls, but the volume in much-smaller Batavia does not merit that.
Deicke believes Batavia's numbers are high because several senior-citizen-oriented assisted-living facilities in town do not allow their workers to lift fallen residents. In 2014, he suggested charging a fee for such lifts, if the department received repeated calls to an address. The council wasn't interested.
Tuesday, some aldermen suggested fees be charged for such calls. Deicke said other suburbs charge fees of $50 per call to more than $250. A fee could recoup some of the cost of fuel for the engine.
Deicke also reported Tri-City Ambulance will add a sixth ambulance, likely in November. It will be stationed at Geneva's west-side fire station, and handle runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Tri-City stations two ambulances in Batavia, two in St. Charles and one in Geneva.