July 2010

Spreading the Juvenile Fire Safety Message
Participants in last year's Train-the-Trainer workshops discuss reactions to their community training sessions and responses to the play safe! be safe!® program.

Ask Dr. Robert Cole
play safe! be safe! is just one fire safety initiative that Dr. Cole is involved in. This month he discusses a series of workshops he helped develop for the National Association of State Fire Marshals.

Toy-Like Lighter Update
Utah passes legislation banning toy-like lighters.

Outdoor Alert: Did You Know?
July is the official start of firecracker season, and it poses threats to children under five years old. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission*, children under five experience 9% of all firework-related injuries, and boys are four times more likely to be injured than girls. Sparklers accounted for the largest number of injuries.

*2006 Fireworks Annual Report

Barbecue season is well underway. Here are some sobering statistics for the entire family from the National Fire Protection Association*:

• In 2003-2006, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 7,900 home fires involving grills, hibachis or barbecues per year, including an average of 2,900 structure fires and 5,000 outside fires.
• These 7,900 fires caused an annual average of 10 civilian deaths, 120 reported injuries and $80 million in direct property damage.
• One-third (33%) of the home structure fires involving grills started on an exterior balcony or unenclosed porch, 18% started on a courtyard, terrace or patio, and 11% started on an exterior wall surface.

*NFPA's Selections from Home Fires Involving Cooking Equipment-Grilling

Classroom Activity: Find the Fireman
Get parents involved in fire-safety education by sending this Dress the Firefighter activity home and asking the parents to help their child dress the firefighter. Have the children bring in their completed activities to put on display.

Train-the-Trainer Participants Spread the Word

Recently play safe! be safe!® Bulletin editors spoke to a number of past participants in Train-the-Trainer play safe! be safe! workshops to ask how they are using workshop materials to train others and their reaction to the program.

Daycare providers and teachers alike responded positively to the play safe! be safe! kits. Dr. Sheila R. Thomas, a licensed trainer with Bright from the Start, the state agency that administers Georgia's Pre-K Program, licenses child care centers and home-based child care, attended the Macon, GA workshop last year and commented about the two training sessions she's conducted to date: "The participants were excited about the kits because materials are so well designed. They commented that the ‘box had everything they needed' to take back to their classrooms."

Thomas' training sessions reached approximately 50 daycare providers throughout southwest Georgia. To capture daycare providers' attention in a training session, she starts by telling them they are the reason children are not fearful of fire. Just as Dr. Robert Cole explains in his workshops, Thomas counsels: "I begin discussing all of the happy occasions in which young children experience fire for the first time — birthday candles, backyard barbecues, etc. You can see the light bulbs going on! It was a real educational experience for participants."

The importance of the Spanish-language components of the play safe! be safe! kit were pointed out by Rosalie Yanacheck, education coordinator for the Council for the Spanish Speaking, which overseas the Guadalupe Head Start schools in Milwaukee, Wis. "We serve 700 children through our 35 classrooms and most of the children are Spanish speaking. Fire safety is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. We serve mostly low-income families, and rarely does a season go by without one of our families experiencing a fire either due to a faulty space heater or some other cause."

Yanacheck completed training at all of the Head Start centers shortly after she attended the Train-the-Trainer workshop in Madison last year. Like other educators, she pointed out that providers were delighted with the ease that they could introduce the program. They especially appreciated how the program involved the parents, and as a result a special play safe! be safe! parents' presentation was organized.

For Judith Samuels, public fire life safety educator for the Crawford County Fire Department Prevention and Drug Education, Roberta, GA, the play safe! be safe! training sessions she conducted were just one more opportunity for her to visit the pre-K and kindergarten grades in this rural community. Samuels is in schools so frequently that she is affectionately known as "the fire department lady."

"Teachers responded favorably to the play safe! be safe! training sessions that I conducted right after taking the Train-the-Trainer workshop in Macon last fall," explains Samuels. "They planned to introduce play safe! be safe! on a bi-weekly basis and with our frequent visits the message will be reinforced year-round." Samuels and her colleagues teach fire safety using clowning, music and puppetry and participate in community events, such as the local "Safety Blitz" to reinforce the importance of juvenile fire safety.

Samuels knows the juvenile fire safety education is working because children in the community have been responsible for saving members of their families. "Just recently," she explains, "there was a youngster who saw smoke coming from a closet door in his home. He touched the door knob, felt it was hot, got down low and crawled to alert a sibling and his parents to get out of the house. They exited via window without injury."

This young boy and two other youngsters from Peach County have been honored as "Hometown Heroes" by the fire department. In ceremonies with local officials, the "heroes" receive certificates, a special dinner, and lots of local publicity for themselves and juvenile fire safety initiatives.

Ask Dr. Cole

In most of Dr. Robert Cole's columns, he shares and expands on the information that he discusses in his play safe! be safe!® workshops. This month he talks about another project in which his company, Fireproof Children/Prevention First, is involved. The program still focuses on juvenile fire safety but involves a coalition of community professionals.

At Fireproof Children/Prevention First, we provide research-based training and educational materials to a variety of national organizations, fire departments, schools, daycare centers, and community agencies. Most recently, we developed the Youth Fire Prevention workshops for the National Association of State Fire Marshals Fire Research and Education Foundation, funded through a FEMA grant. Since January 2010, we've delivered these workshops in the ten FEMA regions.

The workshops are best described as day-long, problem-solving sessions that bring together fire-service personnel and representatives from mental health facilities, hospitals, social service agencies, schools, and juvenile justice coordinators. Our goal in recruiting participants for these workshops is to find a broad coalition of community and state professionals.

In the first part of the workshop, we have participants break down into random groups, and we ask each one to list the specific challenges and successes they have faced in their jobs. As a group, they share and discuss each person's list and then have to come up with the top three challenges and successes. In the process, participants learn how other communities and states solve problems that are similar to their own.

In the second half, they regroup with members of their community and have to identify one mid-range goal and then the action steps to achieve it. With the knowledge they gained in the morning session, each group more easily identifies a central challenge and strategies to address it.

What's key in the workshop, is that participants see the broader picture and that there are two parts to the story - prevention and intervention. Most importantly, they recognize the benefit of working together to find solutions. No one agency can do it alone.

Toy-Like Lighter Update

Since the last play safe! be safe!® Bulletin, the Mississippi bill prohibiting the sale of novelty lighters was signed into law by the governor, and Utah has joined the ranks of states passing Novelty & Toy-Like Lighter Legislation, which bans the sale of these lighters. The Illinois legislature has passed a bill, and it has been sent to the governor for signing.