West Elementary students learn fire safety

By Staff
Melissa Dozier-Cason FCT Staff Writer
Russellville Firefighters visited West Elementary School Oct. 9-10 to teach kindergarteners about fire safety.
The firefighters instructed the students on how to deal with fire situations. The children met Sparky, a firedog that teaches fire safety. Sparky, firefighter Jeremy Glenn, sang songs about fire safety, and danced to entertain the children.
After the children were instructed on how to react to fire situations, their fire knowledge was tested. Firefighter Shane Mansell took groups of children into the Fire Safety House, a small-scale home used to discuss fire hazards with kids, to see how they would react to a fire situation. At the end of the session, the children were tested in a simulated fire situation, where a "bedroom" filled with smoke and the door became hot to the touch. The children were instructed to get low to the ground, and they "escaped" through a window with the help of firefighters.
The Fire Safety House travels to area schools promoting fire safety. They will visit each elementary school in Franklin County this month. They also visited Little Tigers in Russellville on Thursday, and they are scheduled to visit Tharptown next week, Mansell said.
The National Fire Prevention Association has designated Oct. 8-14 as Fire Prevention Week. According to the NFPA, between 1999 and 2002, there were 114,000 reported home fires associated with cooking equipment on average per year, resulting in an annual 290 deaths and 4,380 injuries. Cooking fires are the number one cause of home fires and home fire injuries.
A phone survey found that 96 percent of US households had at least one smoke detector. However, about half of the home fire deaths result from fires in that small percentage that do not have smoke detector, according to the NFPA.
For more information on how to fire safety and prevention, visit www.nfpa.org.