Fire Prevention Week

Fire Prevention Week was held in early October.
This year’s theme was preventing fires in the home.
Charlottetown's fire prevention officer, Cindy McFadyen, said it’s easier than people may think to prevent home fires.
"Be careful around stoves and be prepared to have an escape plan. Have a fire drill from the home and plan and practice all your fire safety rules and regulations."
Fire prevention week has been a yearly tradition since 1922. It started to remember the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that lasted two days, Oct.8-9, and killed more than 250 people. It also left 100,000 homeless and burned more than 2,000 acres.
Every year in Canada there has been a different theme for fire prevention week. Last year’s theme was practise your escape plan.
It is easy to prevent home fires, McFadyen said, but just as easy to let them happen if people don't take the proper steps. Replacing the fire alarm batteries goes a long way, she said.
"They should test their batteries on a monthly basis and change their batteries twice a year as well as smoke alarms should be replaced every 10 years."
McFadyen said along with making sure the batteries are in good condition, there should be enough smoke alarms. One is not enough.
"We want people to make sure their smoke alarms are working and make sure they're installed in every level of the home as well as every sleeping room."
Serge Leduc, Spring Park Elementary School’s principal, said they do many things during the week to teach children how to avoid fires and how to react properly if there was one.
They brought in firefighter Bob Chandler, who gave the Grades one to three students a presentation. He showed them a video and brought in real firefighting equipment such as air tanks, boots, gloves and hats so the kids could understand the reality of being a firefighter.
He also showed them how to react to a real fire situation by using the stop, drop and roll tactic.
Leduc said the hands-on experience is the best way to go with younger kids.
“They loved it. It’s best to do it that way so it can have an impression. The more hands on it is the more effective it is because they’ll remember it.”
The kids were allowed to touch and even smell the material.
“It has a much more lasting effect,” said Leduc.
In the future the students from grades one to three will be taken to a firehall to see the firetrucks and take part in different experiments, Leduc said.
There’s always more emphasis on fire safety during fire prevention week, Leduc said, but the school also promotes school safety year round.
Grades one to three students had to take home a fire plan so they could apply what they learned in a real-life situation, and all grades in the school do a fire drill every month.
The school encourages fire safety to make sure the kids won’t forget, Leduc said.
“It’s engrained in you because it’s repetative so if there is a reality you’ll be prepared.”