In response to my blog post, Children Don’t Cause Fires, Adults Do, Chief Steve Marler, San Juan Island (WA) Fire Department wrote:
Hello. You pose an interesting premise. The reason I’ve invested nearly 40 years in public fire safety education to children is based upon the hope that they will grow into fire safe adults. Your statistics call that effort into question. So, how do you balance the old adages of : “teach them while they’re young” and “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” with the reality of the stats?
Where along their growth path to adults do the children forget the fire safety lessons we have tried to teach them? Were we ineffective to begin with? Or, did they forget or ignore the lessons as they grew into adulthood? If so, what was the influence that caused that shift?
Regarding fire sprinklers, I will never understand why they are not more universally accepted. Placing the fire suppression capability where the potential hazard is shouldn’t be a question. What represents a better investment in a community’s safety? A $500,000+ fire engine and all of the associated costs of staffing it with trained personnel – somewhere within five miles of the potential fire – or an on site automatic system that will most likely extinguish – or at least contain – the fire while it is still in it’s incipient stages?
I believe that the insurance industry is missing the boat on fire sprinklers. While not scientific evidence, my professional observations over the years has been that property damage is dramatically reduced when sprinklers are present.
Steve, thank you for your insightful remarks! You bring up many good points that fire service professionals really need to pursue with additional research (Any Executive Fire Officer Program students out there looking for a topic for you next ARP?)
Another reader, Jim Guy, Founder- Board Chairman at J-FIRE of Western New York wrote:
We focus on the young likely because its easy. But, what we
provide in education is often lost in an overriding effort to entertain them. Further, without reinforcement of the fire safe/prevention message in their home environment, any value is soon lost to the parent’s daily example/attitudes towards fire safety. It is no wonder that loss to fire is perpetuated from generation to generation.
The very young and the elderly have been identified as the population suffering the most from fire. I believe adults provide the environment for the young and influence their behavior and are therefore responsible for propagating poor fire safe living. The elderly have lived a lifetime ignoring or at least tempting loss to fire and are now being caught.
I agree and for years have advocated for fire safe living skills to be taught in earnest at the high school, college and new parent training programs as the way to finally break the cycle of perpetual fire losses.
I think one “piece” of the lack of retention for fire safe behaviors for children as they grow into adults is that too many departments and their communities have a “one and done” mentality. Children get a “small piece” the safety message, e.g., “stop drop and roll”, don’t play with matches, and E.D.I.T.H. (Exit Drills in the Home), somewhere during grades K-4, one time, and then this foundation is never built upon during their remaining school years.
We are missing many opportunities to inform and educate young people about how to avoid becoming a victim of fire as they grown into adulthood and assume greater life responsibilities.
See Related: Fire Safety on College Campuses
These are just a couple of thoughts that come to mind where we could have a positive influence “along the way”:
- Deliver a campus fire safety program that’s a part of the freshman orientation program at all colleges and universities with a refresher program during each of their remaining years.
- Develop local codes and ordinances that require all renters to complete a basic fire safety course before signing a rental agreement.
- Develop local codes and ordinances that require all prospective homeowners to complete a basic fire safety course before signing their closing documents on a property.
With the “explosion” of on-line tools for computers and tablets and 
smartphones there are limitless opportunities for Fire and EMS departments and their communities to make such ideas a reality. Check out a sampling of such programs below in the Resources Section.
If we’re going to get serious about using education as a tool to reduce the numbers of fire-related deaths and injuries in the USA, we have to get beyond fire safety education being a “child’s topic”. We need to rethink both our strategies and methodologies: we have to focus on improved outcomes (measure of effectiveness) rather than solely on the number of programs that we deliver each year (measure of efficiency).
Remember the first rule of getting yourself out of a hole? Quit digging.
Resources
50 Great Online Tools for Teaching Fire Safety (For all ages)
The Center for Campus Fire Safety
Campus Fire Safety: Safety Tips for Students and Parents
Fire Safety Education & Outreach Programs: Memphis, Tennessee. A Qualitative Research Project
Fire Prevention and Safety for College Students and Young Adults
Landlords and Apartment Renters Safety and Compliance Tips (City of Bellingham, Washington)
NFPA offers free, updated fire and fall prevention program for
older adults
Outreach: NFPA’s Public Education Division
About the Author
Battalion Chief (Ret.) Robert Avsec served with the men and women of the Chesterfield County (VA) Fire and EMS Department for 26 years. He’s now using his acquired knowledge, skills, and experiences as a freelance writer for FireRescue1.com and as the “blogger in chief” for this blog. Chief Avsec and his wife of 30+ years now make their home in Cross Lanes, WV. Contact him via e-mail at robertavsec@fireemsleaderpro.com.
Wow, Bob! I don’t have enough time in the remaining days of this week to share my thoughts on this topic. Admittedly I just read the original post, and spot on you are once again. I was, and still think like Chief Marler (fire safe kids grow into fire safe adults), but as importantly I can’t quite make the leap that our childhood education program is failing (as in they forget what they learned).
Unless someone can show me that the ENTIRE fire service it teaching kids the same things the same way, I won’t buy it. We live in a society that is too mobile. Kids who live in Chesterfield this year, may find themselves on San Juan Island in Washington before they know it. That’s to say unless we can prove that the ADULTS starting the fires here today went through our education program in school (or San Jaun Island’s), I will continue to believe our programs work specifically because we don’t have kids starting fires, it’s the adults that move here. Another great reason why we need adult education efforts. We didn’t teach them when they were kids
On the sprinkler issue, what I learned in our efforts here in VA when we were fighting for their inclusion in the building code was that the insurance industry hasn’t really jumped on board yet because they fear how sprinklers could impact their business model. Lower losses mean lower rates means lower revenues…..
I thought you said you didn’t have enough remaining time to respond? You Fire Marshals are all alike–I mean that in a good way!
As usual, we find ourselves in agreement on some things and perhaps a little less on others. I think we can both agree that one huge missing variable in the equation is: a lack of collected data and research on the programs that we do deliver. How do we know that children who’ve been exposed to fire safety education are not the same college student who leaves food cooking on a hot plate (that wasn’t allowed in their dorm in the first place)? Or the adult uses the wrong container (the one containing gasoline) to refuel their kerosene space heater?
As with most things in life, we’ve got to start making decisions and allocating resources based on data and the thoughtful analysis of that data. We can’t continue delivering a product (fire safety education) to children with the assumption that they will grow into fire safe adults.
Take care my friend. See you in the next comments!