Question:
Ok brother and sister fire fighters, can you help us out here with a very unscientific survey? What are your department's plans for FPW? Schools, Community Events, Publicity? How involved are you in your elementary schools? Any formal education efforts in injury prevention? Besides RiskWatch? Does anyone in your department care about education, or is just something they feel they have to do? Do you have a smoke house to use? Do you have a full-time education coordinator?

Answer: Q: What are your department's plans for FPW? Schools, Community Events, Publicity?

A: If only we could do it all in a week- try Fire Prevention Month. We will once again be going to all our service area schools as well as several outside our service area again this year. We use a presentation that includes two fire safety clowns and a puppet show. Our puppet show has grown up over the years and we now have over two dozen professional quality puppets, a professional sound system, and a huge two tier portable stage. The show started about 12 years ago with the good old Firefighter Frank puppet set from Puppet Productions. We now use a wide variety of music including the original Puppet Productions numbers, Tiller and Friends, Sesame Street, Be Cool About Fire Safety, and Fire Safety for Kids with Beasel the Easel to name a few. My music collection has around 50 fire and life safety songs that are "puppetable". Our current schedule includes 10 elementary schools, a half dozen daycare centers, and two Senior Citizen's centers which will be the meeting place for the area's home-schooled kids. We start this Wednesday and will be doing shows through the second week of November. Each performance runs between 45 and 60 minutes and includes five or six puppet numbers with the clowns filling in between. We use a truckload of props and a variety of skits, many of which are borrowed or inspired by the famous Tiller and Ranger of the Phoenix FD. Additionally, we schedule surprise fire drills in our main elementary schools. These drills are set up between us and the principle, usually to occur within a day or so of our puppet show at the school. This drill is in addition to those drills normally scheduled by the school, and we add a few elements to our drills. We always bring a fire truck that responds in Code 3 from about a block away shortly after the drill goes off. The smoke machine is usually used to add some realism to the event by smoking up a main hallway to force the use of a secondary exit, if such use will not cause any safety concerns. Q: How involved are you in your elementary schools? Any formal education efforts in injury prevention? Besides RiskWatch?

A: We are very involved, but we do not yet have an injury prevention program (outside of fire safety), but it is a topic that's been discussed for a couple years. Just not implemented yet. Q: Does anyone in your department care about education, or is just something they feel they have to do? A: We care very much. No one "has" to be involved in fire prevention. The program is overseen by our fire marshal, who also happens to be the lead clown (no pun intended). Our core group of puppeteers are on-call employees. We also have several spouses who volunteer their time to the puppet show. There are a few full-time employees who are involved in the puppet shows, and the Captains let them leave the station to assist with the program during their duty days, but a couple of them also volunteer their time to the program on their off days. Q: Do you have a smoke house to use? A: A neighboring department has a smoke house and we've borrowed it on numerous occasions. We rarely use it during our October activities, but often have it at public events during the summer months. Quite frankly, the smoke house doesn't even hold a candle to our program. Q: Do you have a full-time education coordinator? A: Yes, our fire marshal who also carries the designation of Fire Prevention Officer.