The Howick Fire Department has released some surprising statistics when it comes to fire preparedness among homeowners.
The department's Twitter account says they have visited 372 Howick-area homes since early May and found only 20% were compliant with the Ontario Fire Code.
Fire Chief Shawn Edwards says they found a lot of smoke alarms that were over a decade old, even some that were older than that.
Edwards says what they found varied between "not having the required number of smoke alarms on every level of the home, including outside of sleeping areas; to not having any working smoke alarms period; to not having any smoke alarms in the home at all".
Howick Fire removed 85 non-functioning fire alarms during the visits and installed 180 new alarms.
