Red Deer Fire Marshal Wes Van Bavel is telling restaurant owners that it’s best to keep their fire suppression systems maintained, not just for safety reasons, but economic ones as well.

“It’s cheaper and easier to do the scheduled maintenance than try and get away with it for a year or two and get caught and spend all that time and extra time to clean,” said Van Bavel.

“I can think of one restaurant going back about a year-and-a-half ago that was shut down for three days just for cleaning. That’s how dirty it was. If they had just kept up with the regular maintenance, they wouldn’t have that issue.”

The advice comes after the owner of Joey’s Seafood Restaurant in South Red Deer was fined $5,000 for not having its system serviced, and then doctoring the maintenance records.

“The life safety equipment over the cooking appliance, it’s there for a reason,” said Van Bavel.

“To mislead us that the work is done, it’s putting the occupants of the building, the firefighters at risk.”

Van Bavel says in restaurants where there’s lots of frying or deep-frying, greasy vapors fill the air, posing a hazard. In the event of a fire, the suppression system over cooking appliances expels a “wet chemical agent” that covers it and puts it out.

“Typically it can be half a day, or a day’s cleanup, have a service company come in and you’re back in business again. If it’s not maintained and they don’t work, the damage is often extensive.”