Essay 3.3:Baby Steps to Fire Safety: Teach the Children

I remember learning about fire safety in Mrs. Pratt’s third grade class. My class was taught not to play with fire, the importance of a smoke detector, how to come up with an evacuation plan in case of a home fire, and how to stop drop and roll. Do you remember when you first learned about fire safety? Emergencies and dangerous situations can occur at any given time. In an article from the Journal of Community Psychology, William O. Dwyer says that most of the time the children that die in fires are under the age of five (McConnell 213). I think that teaching fire safety at a young age is very important. If kids are taught how to avoid fires and the process of escaping from a dangerous fire, then more young lives can be saved. I’m glad that I learned about fire safety at an early age, because it became an important piece of my childhood.

I was an eight year old third grader; of course I would be terrified when danger was around me. On the afternoon of June 23, 2000, I didn’t understand how dangerous fire was before that day, but I clearly understood its dangers soon after. That afternoon, my little sister and I decided to take a nap together in my older sister’s queen sized bed, while my grandmother remained upstairs in the kitchen to fix dinner. To us, my older sister’s downstairs bedroom seemed like the safest place to snuggle up during a huge summer thunderstorm. About a good twenty minutes into our naps, we were awakened by what we thought was the noise of the loudest crack in the sky known to man. With a sniff of the smoky air, I realized something was wrong. Then I noticed that before I went to sleep, the house was slightly dark and gloomy since all the lights were out and the clouds heavily covered the sunlight, but now there was a sudden brightness to the house. I realized that the bottom of my house was hit by a powerful rod of lightning and caught on fire; my six year old sister, my grandmother and I needed to leave our home as soon as possible.

The first thing that I could think to do was get up off of the bed. Quickly I got my sister to follow me out of the room. When I held her quivering hand I could tell that my sister also knew that something was wrong and she was frightened as well. When we reached the doorway I could see the bright huge flames flashing in my family den, and burning away many of my family’s possessions. Luckily the fire had not spread past the family den so there was a chance that we were able to go up the stairs to the front door. I could feel the heat of the blaze hit my side as I approached the steps, and I knew that if my clothes caught on fire that we needed to stop drop and roll. I jolted up the steps and pulled my sister along; when we got up the stairs I glanced in the kitchen I saw that my grandmother was still in the kitchen. “Granny, quick get out the house, it’s on fire, it’s on fire,” I yelled up to her direction. “Oh Lord,” she yelled and quickly got up out of the wooden kitchen chair she was sitting in; she headed toward the front door where my sister and I stood. I remembered learning to check doorknobs making sure they were not too hot to handle. When I touched the doorknob, it was slightly warm but not too hot to grip on to. I opened the front door so we could all get out of the house; I looked back to see the progress that the fire might have made and saw that it had already started coming up the stairs. Once we were all safely out of the house we were spotted by our neighbors who had seen the fire coming from our house; they happened to be running to the house to help us out. Thankfully our neighbors already called 911 and the firefighters and ambulance arrived about two minutes after my family and I evacuated. During all the action that was taking place outside, I was taken into my neighbors’ home to call my mother, who was at work the whole time.

Before this incident, my family never sat down at the table and discussed a proper fire escape plan for us to follow if a fire was to happen. There is a clear lack of fire safety and prevention in the home and at the schools. In The New York Amsterdam News article, “Kids at risk with lack of fire safety education”, students proclaim that their schools lack in teaching fire safety (Barsky). The kids in these schools are upset that they truly don’t know how to properly escape a fire; they are aware that their lives can be at risk at anytime. It would be better if fire safety and prevention programs were started in preschools. Evidence found in McConnell, Leeming, and Dwyer’s study titled Evaluation of a “Fire-Safety Training Program for Preschool Children,” provides support that it is beneficial to train preschoolers in fire safety because it prevents injury to the children in the near future (McConnell). Ideas like this need to be implemented so our youth can live long joyful lives. A parent really does not want to receive the news that their child is no longer alive; parents do not want to outlive their children.

In most cases, coming together as a family and preparing for the dangers of a fire can be absolutely beneficial. There are some situations that can cause a child to die in a fire. Donna Miller’s article “7-year-old boy dies in Medina house fire; mom and 4 siblings escape,” from October 26 2009, describes an incident that occurred near Cleveland, Ohio (Miller). The death of the 7-year old boy in the house fire was most likely due to his family not being prepared for this dangerous situation (Miller). “As of 11 a.m., investigators had not found a smoke detector in the rubble,” this family didn’t implicate fire safety in their home (Miller).If a smoke detector was in the house the child could have survived; he would have been awakened from his sleep and have been able to try to escape. Too many children are losing their lives in house fires, they need to be better prepared. I could tell that my sister was scared when my house was on fire but she had no idea what to do to escape the danger on her own.

Not only did the firefighters and ambulance come to put out the fire and help anyone that was hurt, but CBS 6 News was also on the scene. The day turned into my first news appearance; I thought this was the coolest thing ever at that moment. I got to be on TV, the mic was turned on I was able to tell Richmond, Virginia my story about how my family and I were able to survive my first dangerous encounter with fire. I feel like I made a lot of viewers that tuned into the 6 o’clock news that day proud. I was a young hero, and my family was safe and secured.

My niece, who just turned seven, actually had the same Mrs. Pratt as her first grade teacher at the same elementary school that I attended. The day that she learned about fire safety she came home very excited. She had received a coloring book with a cute Dalmatian dog in a huge red fire truck on the cover. “Hey look what I can do, Auntie Key,” she yelled and then she started the motion of stopping, dropping, and rolling. I was grateful that she had received that knowledge at her age. “Yeah, that’s how you do it,” I said, and then we were rolling across the floor together until we got hot.

Works Cited

Barksky, Michael and Negron, Elizabeth. “Kids at risk with lack of fire safety education.” The New York Amsterdam News. 26 Mar. 2009: Web

McConnell, Charles F., Leeming, Frank C., Dwyer, William O. “Evaluation of a Fire-Safety Training Program for Preschool Children.” Journal of Community Psychology. Vol. 24 Issue 3 (1996): 213-217. Web

Miller, Donna. “7-year-old boy dies in Medina house fire; mom and 4 siblings escape.” Cleveland.com. 26 Oct. 2009: Web