Well here we are finishing up fire prevention week or should I say fire prevention month as it seems to run for a whole month instead of just a week as in the past. This year the two stations 3 and 9 visited 8 elementary schools and 8 day care centers in our first due. The total students were over 4,000 with a total of over 500 kids in the day care centers. Mr. Fairfax told me we did over 27 activities in total within the schools.

Mr. Keith Fairfax was our fire prevention go to guy this year and since he is retired with nothing else to do we thought he would make a good one to have the job. As usual, he took the bull by the horns and got on the phone returning calls and scheduling the days that we could come. That’s why I say fire prevention month because there is no way that we can include all the schools and day cares in one week plus hold our open house at the firehouse in Lexington Park. It seems at times that everyone out there thinks we are a paid department and can come at any time that works for them. Keith had to tell them it doesn’t work that way and we would have to make the visits based on our manpower available.

In the end it all worked out well and everyone was happy especially the children and we finished up this past Friday with our last scheduled day care. Not to say we won’t have any others during the year and yes we will make sure we visit those too. It’s just what we as volunteers do day in and day out. It also helps to see the looks on the faces of the kids as they see Sparky, sit in the fire trucks, and squirt water out of the fire hoses. Now, we do all this but our bread and butter is teaching how to call 911, two ways out, and make sure to check their smoke detectors when they got home. We know that this happens because more than once I have had a parent stop me in the store while I’m wearing my fire department shirt and tell me how their child came home from school and before they would eat their supper it was time to check smoke detector and work on two ways out of the house in the event of a fire. How cool is that.

So to all our members who took of their time to visit, dress out and crawl around the floor, and sit on a curb squirting water with the children, a big well done. Now take a break and wait for the bells to go off.

Oh by the way. There are a lot of pictures on here and some don't have captions on them but do hope some of you enjoy them anyway. Please if you don't look at any of them just check out the last one for me. I think you will like it.