The Fire Station

The fire station has been, in my opinion, one of our most informative visits so far. Maybe that's because one of their main goals is to educate so that they aren't needed - but at any rate, the firefighters who visited with us were wonderful.

The fire fighters took us back to their training room first and we watched a short cartoon about how quickly a fire can engulf a house and how make an emergency plan - planning an escape route, meeting place, and knowing the exits from each room of the house.

Then they modeled their gear and let us hear how the air tanks sound. They gave each child a backpack full of coloring books, stickers, informational pamphlets, keychains, cups, etc. My little firefighter wears his backpack - ahem, his air tank - around the house now when he's fighting a fire!

After that we went out to the bay and got to climb on some trucks. The firefighters answered questions about various parts and purposes and let the kids really check it all out.

Some even posed for pictures.

We decided that the giant bumpers made great places to pose for pictures. What cute firefighters!

This small vehicle is ridden by the fire chief in parades. This was by far the kids' favorite - it was more their size!

My little firefighter became so into fire safety during our study of it this week that we ended up having a whole family discussion about it after visiting the fire station. We designated a neighbor's porch as our emergency meeting place and even practiced climbing out of a window (to alleviate our daughter's fears of how it would work). Our smoke detectors have new batteries and we still pray that God will guard us from a fire, but should it happen, my short fire crew of fire fighters knows what to do.

If you've never visited your local fire station, give them a call. Who knows - you might learn something, too!