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Firefighters visit Liberty kids
LIBERTY
She had a tough time keeping her plastic fire helmet on her head because it didn’t quite fit.
Her face scrunched in frustration, Danashia Monique Rivers, 6, a kindergartner at E.J. Blott Elementary School, tried pounding it down to keep it on. It bounced backed up.
She tried tugging it down. That didn’t work. So she just took it off and stood, hatless, with her classmates as they listened to Liberty Fire Capt. Bob Catchpole review what to do when there’s a fire.
Standing there, in front of that huge firetruck behind the school Friday morning while firefighters and paramedics talked about fire safety, their equipment and how it worked, Danashia didn’t need any hat as proof she knows her stuff.
“Tell me what you learned this week in school about fire safety,” Catchpole asked the group.
“Stop, drop and roll!” said her classmate Russell Prisby.
“They should roll!” Danashia said at exactly the same time.
The school’s five kindergarten classes had been hard at work getting ready for the fire department’s visit, which was sponsored by the Gibson Insurance Agency in observance of October’s being Fire Prevention Month.
“What do you hear at home when there’s a fire?” Catchpole asked. “Everybody should have a smoke detector,” he continued. “What does it sound like?”
“Beep, beep!” they replied.
“You go outside then,” he said, “to a special spot, don’t you, and you never go back in.”
One girl suggested hiding in a closet when there’s a fire.
No, said Catchpole. “Go and stand by a window.”
In fact, said firefighter-paramedic Brandon Wirtz, who works parttime for Liberty and fulltime for Austintown, rescuing very young children presents some special challenges.
They hide.
“It’s actually a huge problem for us,” he said.
Another problem, he said, is dealing with the fear children have when they are confronted by a firefighter in his or her full gear.
“They come with the mask and the air pack — that’s a scary thing to see,” he said.
So Liberty and all other departments get out to the schools to teach children fire safety and help them become familiar with what a firefighter looks like, he said.
Still, there was some fun involved.
Gary Offerdahl handed out boxes of crayons after explaining the American Red Cross of the Mahoning Valley’s role at fires and disasters, while the kids got a look at the agency’s Emergency Relief Vehicle.
The morning would not have been complete if they hadn’t turned on the lights and the siren, too.
“We like coming up and doing these kinds of things with these kids,” said Fire Chief Gus Birch.