Firefighters still helping students learn not to burn

  CARIBOU, Maine — It’s been decades in the making, but the message is the same when it comes to educating youths about the dangers of fire: learn not to burn.
Leading the educational facet of the Caribou Fire Department is Scott Jackson, who’s been overseeing the program for the past 11 years. Back when he was a student, the fire department would bring the trucks up to the school and students would enjoy spraying the hoses. Students still get to spray the hoses (once the weather warms back up in the spring) but the department has taken a stronger role in classrooms around the area to teach important aspects like “stop, drop and roll.”
Before Jackson’s tenure with the Learn Not to Burn program, Nate Randolph oversaw the educational piece and started going into the classrooms to put full firefighter gear on for the kids. In a dark, smoke-filled room, firefighters can look frightening to young children and the Learn Not to Burn program helps teach kids that firefighters are there to help — even if they look “silly.”
“I learned over the years not to use the word scary — we look funny or silly,” Jackson explained.
The funny-looking gear tends to evokes fear in young children, which is something Jackson sees when he first starts working with the youngest group of kids.
“When I start with them in preschool and put the gear on, you can see them all back away with a scared look on their face,” he described. “But the second-graders today, they’re used to it.”
When Jackson puts on the gear piece-by-piece for the second-graders, they’re comfortable to the extent that he can laugh and make jokes with them — even while wearing the respirator, which is easily the “most silly” piece of equipment firefighters wear.
“The goal of the program is to get them used to us, and I can see it accomplished; in four years, they’re used to us with all our gear on,” Jackson said with a smile.
While Jackson and the Caribou Fire Department will host the youths to the Department for a firehouse tour in the spring, parents and guardians are encouraged to bring children to the fire station to help reinforce the fact that funny-looking firefighters are always there to help.
“Right from Day-One, students are told they can come to the fire station any time they want,” Jackson said. All the firefighters at the station are willing to dress up in the gear whenever a family wants to swing by for a visit to help reinforce the fact that firefighters, though “funny” looking, are always there to help.
One of Jackson’s favorite parts of teaching children fire safety doesn’t take place in the classroom or the fire station — it’s at the grocery store.
“I’ll be at the grocery store and a parent will come up to me and say, ‘were you the one at the school? My child wouldn’t leave me alone until I changed the batteries in the smoke detector,’” Jackson described. “I love that, because I know the kids are taking stuff home to their parents.”
Additional information about the Cariobu Fire Department can be obtained by calling 493-4204 or by visiting their Facebook page.