By Marci Piltz
Record-Courier staff writer
It's not every day the halls of Crestwood Primary School are filled with firefighters.
There was no emergency situation Thursday, though, as six firefighters walked from class to class. Instead, the members of the Mantua-Shalersville Fire Department were at the school as part of a week-long fire safety education presentation, made to all 18 classes at the school.
The presentation not only marks Fire Prevention Week, which runs through Saturday, but also provides students with important information on what to do in case of a fire.
"We are really focused on teaching the children in our district how to be safe," said Assistant Chief Matt Roosa.
On Thursday, Roosa and five of his co-workers spent nearly the entire day at the primary school working with all the second-grade classes.
Capt. Mike Pender reviewed fire safety skills with students indoors before taking them outside to inspect fire equipment, including a fire truck and an ambulance. Some of the topics Pender discussed including the importance of always knowing two ways out of a room in case of a fire; the need to have a designated meeting place outside of a structure in case of a fire; and the importance of having to crawl through smoke to safely get away.
Pender explained that when on the second floor of a home, you sometimes may have no option in a fire other than to jump out of second-story window.
"Say you jump out, and fall and break your leg, then what happens?" he asked one group.
"You'd have to go in an ambulance," one student said.
Pender agreed, but pointed out to the students, "I might be a little bit hurt, but am I in that burning building anymore?"
The students' replies of "No" echoed throughout the classroom before they eagerly lined up to crawl through a "smoke tunnel' (a table covered with black material meant to symbolize smoke) before heading outside. The fire equipment sparked several interesting questions from the students.
"Have you even been in a real fire?," asked one. Another chimed in, "How many fires have you been in?," while yet another asked, "Have you been in a fire this month?"
Student Tristan Herman said after the presentation he learned that firefighters "help people and also work with ambulances."
"I learned that there are two ways to get out of a building if there's a fire "the window and the door," said his classmate Jenna Hopkins.
Roosa said by the end of the week, the program will have been presented to each of the schools grades "from preschool through second grade "as well as to third-graders at Crestwood Intermediate School.
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E-mail: mpiltz@recordpub.com
Phone: (330) 296-9657