Museum of Fires Past is back to encourage more escape plans and smoke alarms

Published: 15/08/2023 | Public campaign, Risk reduction | National

This August, we are continuing to target NZ households to prompt them to install smoke alarms in every bedroom, hallway and living area and create a 3-Step-Escape Plan.

Our always-on tracker survey shows that in FY22-23, we either met or exceeded our Smoke Alarm and Escape Planning Statement of Performance Expectation targets (SPEs):

The claimed incidence of people with at least one working smoke alarm installed was 92% for FY22-23 (target was 88%)
The claimed incidence of people with a household escape plan was 62% for FY22-23 (target was 62%).

We can attribute this result to a mix of:

consistent, hard mahi of our people engaging with communities – thank you for all your support in helping spread our safety messages over the last 12 months
high profile incidents like the Auckland weather events, Cyclone Gabrielle and Loafers Lodge fire
improvements in our tracker survey
our national marketing campaigns also helped motivate and prompt action.

With more people installing 10-year photoelectric smoke alarms, and an SPE well above target, we are starting to move away from the ‘push the button’ message and shift more NZ households towards having a smoke alarm in every bedroom, hallway and living area.

In addition, research tells us that while the Intenders acknowledge the seriousness of fire and they buy into being fire safe, only 34% claim to have smoke alarms in every bedroom, hallway and living area (vs 41% national average) and only 42% have an escape plan for their household in the event of a fire (vs 62% national average).

Our plan for FY23-24 includes continuing to focus on the Intenders audience mindset and merging Escape Planning and Smoke Alarms campaigns under one housefire readiness campaign umbrella: Museum of Fires Past. The campaign combining both the 3-Step Escape Plan and Smoke Alarms in every bedroom, hallway and living area messages will run in social media, radio, digital and ‘out of home’ channels across two phases from August to October 2023:

Phase 1 Escape Planning messaging – from 13 August and across Te Wiki o te Reo Māori | Māori Language Week (11-17 Hepetema | September), during which all our campaign messaging will switch to te reo Māori.

Phase 2 Smoke Alarms messaging – from 11 September, in the lead-up to and after Daylight Savings (24 September).

Check out our Portal page(external link) for a summary of our planned marketing activity.

How you can help

You can help support the campaign by sharing the message with our people and local stakeholders. Assets are available on the Bookshelf(external link), on our website and via Facebook Admins Group.

If you have any questions about the campaign, please reach out to Kelley.toy@fireandemergency.nz