Ottawa Fire Services and Ottawa Humane Society providing decals to inform firefighters of pets in households

By Alex Goudge

Ottawa Fire Services (OFS) and the Ottawa Humane Society (OHS) have teamed up to create a way to help inform firefighters how many pets are in a household.

Residents are being offered free decals for their front doors or windows indicating how many pets are present in a home.

According to OFS Public Information Officer Nicholas DeFazio, firefighters do two extensive searches of property during every fire, and the decals provide extra information on how to respond to the incident.

“If they go in, they're doing their searches no matter what, [and] they come out with one dog and they see the sticker and there's a two beside it, it just gives them that much more information like 'hey, there's another dog in there' because pets do often hide in the case of emergencies,” DeFazio told The Sam Laprade Show on Monday, March 21.

Unlike past iterations of the stickers, these can be removed and replaced when the information needs to be updated.

Meanwhile, DeFazio says Ottawans need to determine who is responsible for bringing a pet outside as part of a family's fire safety plan.

“We always remind people when you're practicing your home escape plan, try and talk about your pet — who's responsibility it is to bring the pet outside to your meeting place, where the pet sleeps,” he explained.

If an individual is unable to grab their pet during the initial escape, DeFazio is urging them to provide information to the 9-1-1 dispatcher, so they can relay the whereabouts of the pet to responding fire crews.

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