The Durant Fire Department visited Northwest Heights, George Washington and Washington Irving elementary schools last week to educate third graders about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and provide them a hands-on experience using fire-rescue equipment.
Durant Fire Marshal Collin Gordon said the youth today don’t have the experience and the memories of what occurred on Sept. 11.
“So, what this is, it really is designed to raise awareness and to create questions in the kids’ minds so that they can go to the adults in their lives and ask those questions about, ‘Hey, what did happen?’” Gordon said. “This really is just kind of an in remembrance thing and we do an activity to let the kids see the types of things that firefighters do on a day in and day out basis. But it’s designed to honor all of those firefighters that died in the World Trade Center on September 11th.”
Students were able to drag an uncharged fire hose and also use a hose to spray a ball off of a cone. They also were able to carry a stretcher and try on bunker gear.
“We’ve created some kidssized mannequins for them that they can pull and carry and put on a backboard and we do it as a race,” Gordon said. “So, it kind of spurs competition among the kids, but all of the activities are built to mimic those kinds of things that we do as firefighters on a regular basis.”
According to Gordon, this is an annual event the fire department does for all third-grade students in Durant to continue educating them.
“All along the way, typically we use pre-k and kindergartners or first graders sometimes,” Gordon said. “They’ll visit the station or we’ll go to the schools here in Durant and do fire safety. This is kind of a predecessor to fire safety month and a lot of times, the older grades, they don’t get to take part in fire-safety activities, so this is just kind of a next step to let them actually see and bring some fire safety awareness to the older grades.”
