Fire safety program comes to Roose

WARREN — In observance of National Fire Prevention Month in October, students in the Center Line High School firefighting class visited kindergarten and first grade students at local schools to talk to them about fire safety.

The program brought them to Roose Elementary School Oct. 24-25. One of the classrooms they visited was Candice Kaars-Mulholland’s split kindergarten/first grade group. Firefighting class instructor David McGee led the presentation with cadets and seniors Ava Kerr and Jordan Campagne.

“Our cadets came today to talk to you all and to show you a little about fire safety. We want to talk particularly about what to do if there is a fire in your house,” said McGee, a firefighter with the Macomb Township Fire Department. “When there is a fire, your job is to get out of the house and get out as fast as you can.”

He reminded the students not to bring their belongings, pets or family members.

“If we have to rescue something in the house, we’ll go and get it because that’s our job. When you get out of your house, you need to go somewhere safe. We call it our meeting place because we all meet there,” McGee said. “It can be anything you want it to be. It can be the neighbor’s house. It can be across the street from a tree. If you’re at your meeting place and then you call 911, we’ll come to your house and put out the fire.”

McGee stressed how important the meeting place is.

“When my kids were little, we went across the street to the park. That was our meeting place. We all met by the pink slide because we practiced and that’s where they go,” McGee said. “If you go outside and you’re not at your meeting place your mom and dad might think you’re still in the house. We don’t want them to go back into the house. We can do that because we have special clothes, and we have special equipment.”

McGee and the students had a brief discussion about smoke.

“If there’s smoke in your house, that smoke is very bad,” McGee said. “The smoke is full of poison. You don’t want to breathe it in. You don’t want to get it on your skin.”

During the presentation, Kerr dressed in bunker gear to show the students everything a firefighter wears when at a fire scene.

“She has her boots on. Her boots are like rainboots. She can walk in puddles because her boots go all the way almost up to her knees,” McGee said. “Also, the bottom of her boot is made out of metal. If she steps on a nail, it’s not going to hurt her feet. It will bend before it goes into her boot.

“We want to make sure that none of her skin and none of her is showing, so that if she goes into a house on fire, she’s safe,” McGee said. “She wears two pairs of pants that protect her body from things that are hot. There are pockets for her tools.”

After the classroom presentation, the students headed outside to see the firetruck the cadets brought. On their way out, many students gave Kerr hugs.

Outside, cadets Tristan Malcolm and Skyler McAlpine, both seniors, went over the different equipment and tools firefighters use when fighting fires or at a car crash. Center Line High School emergency medical technician program teacher David Watts also was present, along with several other cadet students. Malcolm showed the students all the different hoses firefighters can use while dousing flames. They also saw storage spaces on the truck, tools, pressure gauges, flashlights and more.

“We take a lot of our bigger stuff we can’t carry with us, and we put it back here,” Malcolm said of the back of the firetruck. “We have a bunch of secret compartments where we hold more hoses. We have a lot of our stuff here. When we’re not wearing big boots and all this stuff, this is our normal clothes.”

The visit finished after each student got a chance to sit inside the firetruck and see Malcolm spray a firehose.