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By Leon G. Russ
HOMETOWN NEWS
Throughout the month of April Spartanburg County students in grades 1 through 9 have had the opportunity to attend the Junior Fire Academy at City Fire Station 1 in downtown Spartanburg and become Junior Fire Prevention Officers.
Brad Hall, a Senior Fire Inspector with the Spartanburg Fire Division explained the reason for the establishment of the Junior Fire Academy. “We’ve seen some fire losses and some children die in fires the last few months in Spartanburg County so we were approached by the Boy’s and Girl’s Club to reach out to these children.
“We wanted to do something different than the usual, taking the smokehouse to school or the club. We wanted to do something to try and make a real impact on the kids, so we devised the Junior Fire Academy.”
The Junior Fire Academy is a joint effort of the Spartanburg Fire Department, Una Fire Department, Croft Fire Department and Hilltop Fire Department. “The idea was to get schools like Chesnee and Chapman that are outside of the city to participate,” said Hall.
Students from Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs representing nine area schools attended the two-hour fire safety training courses.
The academy provided three nights of training for students in grades 1 through 3, three nights of training for grades 4 through 6, and three nights of training for students in grades 7 through 9.
Hall estimated the total number of students who participated in the academy to be around 600 to 800 children. The benefit, he said, is that the children are able to get a more “hands on” experience at the academy than they would at their school or Boy’s and Girl’s Club.
The academy consisted of four areas, classroom training that instructed children on general fire safety; the firefighter gear station where they got to put on actual firefighting gear and learn about it; the Crawl Low and Go and Stop, Drop and Roll area where the fundamentals are reinforced; and the final station was the smokehouse where the children received a final talk on fire prevention after crawling through the smokehouse.
At the firefighter gear station ten-year-old Dequan Twitty of Chesnee quickly found out how heavy firefighters’ gear is. Spartanburg firefighter Doug Franey helped suit him up with the gear that added an additional 60 to 80 pounds of weight to Twitty.
Twitty handled the gear well while on two feet but once Franey instructed him to get down and crawl he wasn’t able to get up due to the weight of the equipment.
Firefighter Franey stated he “loved” having the kids out for the academy and pointed out another benefit to having the kids attend. “Another plus,” he said, “is they won’t be scared of us if the situation arises that we need to go to their home.”
Lydia Sap who works with the fourth and fifth grade students at the Boy’s and Girl’s Club was happy they were finally able to attend the academy. She said they were informed of the event two weeks ago “and they were really excited about coming. Everyday (for two weeks) they asked about it.”
The Junior Firefighter Academy is a pilot program that will be evaluated upon its completion to assess benefits and determine if future sessions should be conducted.
lruss@hometown-news.com
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