Fire Station Visit

13/12/18

This week was our last meeting before Christmas and we visited our local fire station. We arrived and met all the girls in the foyer. A fireman came out to say hello and then took us all upstairs to their lecture room to go through some theory towards the Fire Safety badge. He was really good at fielding questions from the girls and turning them into the correct answers (for example, on asking what could cause a fire, one girls said "leaving an oven on and forgetting about it" and so he said "shall we call that 'unattended cooking' then?"). The leaders and parents at the back also had a bit of a chuckle when one girl said "using a match to turn on a candle" could cause a fire! Once we had covered the basics of what to do if your clothes caught on fire, the common causes of fires, and why smoke alarms are on the ceiling then we split into two groups and went on a bit of a tour of the fire station.

The group I was with first went down to see the fire engines. Our fireman was explaining how each engine had a callsign in the window that they used to tell them apart and one of the girls asked why they didn't just have names. He then asked them what they thought the engines should be called, to which the response was "Bob, Steve, Frank, and Kevin"! We worked our way around the engine and he opened up the different doors and showed the girls all the equipment inside and let them ask questions. We then swapped over and the other group came into see the fire engines and we got to go outside and play with the hose! Each girl got a chance to hold the hose (with the fireman's help) and spray it into a pit. I think that may have been the highlight of the girls evening!

We then headed back inside and he gave a demonstration of the alert they get for a call - they did a test using our unit name as the text which they girls thought was pretty cool too. I then took my group into the community room and started handing out their baubles from last week while the second group got to see the alert process. As their fireman was showing them the printout, the printer whirred into life again and a real call came in for a chimney fire! We then got to see the firemen load up into their engine and drive off. It was a bit eerie to then give all the girls to their parents and leave without actually saying godbye and thank you to the two firemen who had given us the tour. I think the girls all enjoyed their evening, although they were all a bit excitable - probably a combination of the end of term looming and the fact we were at a fire station.

We are now done for the term until January 10th, although I may post another Queen's Guide update at some point over the holidays. Merry Christmas to all.