Fire & EMS Leader Pro The job of old firefighters is to teach young firefighters how to become old firefighters!
The Home Safe Fire Escape System is a series of skillfully designed props that teach kids how to be safe in every room of their house.
Click on the logo to learn more!
In addition to the loss of a home and favorite possessions, a fire can have a long-term negative impact on children and their families. “Not only does it lead to depression and anxiety, but it can sometimes result in post-traumatic-stress disorder,” says Russell T. Jones.
Jones, a researcher at Virginia Tech, has assessed the impact of disasters on children, including those affected by wildfires in Santa Barbara, Calif., and Hurricane Andrew. He and his graduate students have determined that two factors enabled children to learn and retain skills for safely evacuating a burning building:
- Children who are taught to monitor, evaluate, and reward their evacuation performance do better than those not given that skill.
- Children who are encouraged to talk about the reasons for certain behaviors, make associations between previous information and the information they are to learn, and to ask questions about the new information are more likely to retain the evacuation skills.
From that research, Jones developed and teaches an intervention strategy called Rehearsal-Plus that can be used not only with fires, but with other emergency responses such as dialing for help, performing CPR, and refusing drugs.
See Related: Researchers study the impact of fires on children
For both younger and older children watching positively framed videos was more effective than watching negatively framed videos. Parents also rated positively framed videos as more effective. Thus, safety messages should focus on depicting the positive outcomes that result from engaging in safety behaviors…
Delivering Effective Fire Safety Education to Children Doesn’t Have to be High-Tech
“There’s an app for that!” Seems like that’s become the slogan for the
current times, at least when it comes to information technology, e.g., smartphones and tablets and the like, and for many other facets of daily life. And while videos and computer programs are available that can teach children fire safety behaviors, there’s also a “low-tech” solution that’s both affordable and portable and durable.
Fire Educator’s often tell us there is a shortage of good teaching tools that enable children to have a lot of fun while learning. Using senses, like touching and exploring, encourages kids to focus and ask questions. Where do you find good programs that kids really respond well to?—Tracy Last, Owner of Prevention Connection
The Home Safe Fire Escape System is a series of skillfully designed props that teach kids how to be safe in every room of their house. That’s important—every room in the house—because the overwhelming majority of fire deaths and serious injuries to children occur in their place of residence, e.g., single and multi-family dwellings.
On average, seven people died in U.S. home fires per day. 92 percent of all structure fire deaths resulted from home fires. (National Fire Protection Association, U.S. Home Structure Fires Fact Sheet, 2006-2010).
The Home Safe Fire Escape System is a “fully involved” System 
enables children to actually touch and feel and become actively engaged by being able to place die cut pieces to the mock-up boards for each room of the house. Once the scenes are all dressed with typical home decor, and hazards, there is a chance to role play a mock fire. After the fire is created the children will crawl low under smoke to their meeting place outside where the fire department gets called to come “put out the fire”.
Each fully-contained Home Safe Fire Escape System set includes more than 100 removable pieces (home decor and hazards) plus 6 – 33″ x 33″ scenes and two fire trucks. The scenes include a Kitchen, Living Room, Hallway, Bedroom, Meeting Place and Fire Station.
The HFSE system is easily transported in an automobile.
The Home Safe Fire Escape System is well constructed and professionally manufactured and is made of long wearing durable corplast (corrugated plastic). With proper care the system is a cost effective purchase for any fire department that will last for years. Each system comes compactly packaged in its own carrying case for easy transport and includes a complete narrative teaching outline to help ensure complete and accurate instruction every time.
“Prevention Connection, as an importer, supplier and distributor of educational materials, of over 20 years, researched and searched all over North America to find a supplier of a system such as this,” said Tracy Last, Owner of Prevention Connection. “After years of observation we decided to create the Home Safe Fire Escape System as we could not find anything comparable.”
See Related: The Impact of Safety Messages on Children
The Home Safe Fire Escape System has been used for several years by Fire Safety Teaching Professionals in Canada for many years with great success. “This is a fantastic addition to Fire Safety presentations! I have my Master’s Degree in early childhood education, & know that our hands on learners will remember this lesson the rest of their life!” (Suzanne Walker-Knutzen, Fire Safety Educator)
Good stuff, eh? (I’m working on my Canadian phraseology!) Check out this great teaching system for yourself! Just click on the Home Safe Fire Escape System logo over on the right-hand navigation panel on this page. Share this blog with a fellow fire service professional–career or volunteer–especially those Fire Safety Educators in your world.
The Home Safe Fire Escape System is a series of skillfully designed props that teach kids how to be safe in every room of their house.
Click on the logo to learn more!
You can contact Tracy Last at [email protected]
