Check your smoke alarms.

This might help remind you, for a while anyway. RTÉ have made a series called "Rescue," shown on a Sunday evening, highlighting 6 different rescues that have taken place in Ireland over the years. Last week's (which I only saw tonight) was a programme about the 1986 rescue of 2 children from a 3-storey house on fire in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford. You can watch it here (RTÉ, realplayer, about 30 mins), if you haven't seen it already.

That family escaped because they were woken up by a noise, not by the smoke. Check your alarms weekly - maybe do it on bin night, or Sundays, or after badminton on a Tuesday. Use the test button on the alarm, or try using one of those smelly incense sticks

Every night before you go to bed, switch off your appliances, extinguish the candles, don't leave cigarettes balanced on ashtrays (as they burn down, the balance will change....) and importantly close your doors.

Download fire safety advice brochures here and here, and there are more available (in different languages too!) at the bottom of this page.

Wow, Engineering in the Public Eye?

Naturally, you all appreciate engineering when you drive along our roads, or drink water from the tap, or enjoy protection from the elements in a nice building or flush the loo....no, of course we don't. It's all taken for granted. Which is exactly why it's done - so that people can take it for granted, use it every day and live lives as safe, convenient, and healthy as possible.

But I wanted to mention a very interesting programme this evening on rte radio one, called the Engineer's eye. (It follows a previous 6-parter called the Architect's eye, but naturally, that wasn't interesting or important - oh don't mind me I'm just playing on the old Architect-Engineer rivalry, ha ha don't you know) . The programme is like an interview, between the presenter and an Engineer involved with the work under discussion - tonight it was flood relief works in Limerick.

[Caution, long sentence ahead] Under the spotlight were the multitude of conditions and issues that engineers have considered whilst designing the flood scheme - not just water flow conditions and levels, or protecting towns from flooding, but also how the works affect minutiae of day-to-day fish life as in how they lay their eggs in gravel, and how the modified hydraulics must ensure that the gravel in the bed is kept loose for this purpose. So naturally, I found it interesting - but maybe if you're not familiar with engineering work, you'll find it interesting? There are no "science bits", it's all very ordinary and followable - like much of engineering...uh oh, the secret's out.....[Hey Mr, how's your Young's Modulus? bad in-joke there]

You can download the podcast - yes, we have all the lingo here at prenderb - and get details on further programmes here.

Next week it's the Boyne Bridge on the M1......2000 on RTE Radio 1.

Oh and by the way, the Architect's eye programme was interesting.