Crime & Safety

PHOTOS: Portage Collaborative Montessori Students Brush Up on Fire Safety

The North Canton firefighters traveled to elementary schools this week with their fire safety trailer, but today, St. Paul Catholic School and Portage Collaborative Montessori School came to them

Second-grade students from moved from station to station at the North Canton Fire Department this morning as they learned the ins and outs of fire safety.

They recited their names and addresses as they dialed 911 (their phone calls rang into the department's Safety Trailer, which sits outside the building). They learned from paramedics that ambulances and firefighting and medical personnel aren't as scary as they might seem. And they got to travel through the Safety Trailer, which fills with artificial smoke to simulate a fire.

Their teacher, Kim Rimmele, said the students prepared for the visit to the firehouse by going over the information a 911 dispatcher might ask for, and she stood nearby taking notes to ensure they could recite that info on the spot.

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"It is a great confirmation of what they already know and finding the gaps they don't know and making their parents aware," Rimmele said.

Plus a morning at the fire department shows the students that firefighters and paramedics are here to help them.

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"This experience makes (the firefighters) real to them," she said. "They may not be able to sit down and have a conversation with a fireman anywhere else."

Fire Chief John Bacon said the firefighters took their Safety Trailer to , and elementaries this week (Greentown is covered by the Greentown Fire Department). And students arrived  to the firehouse that morning before the Montessori students.

The Safety Trailer program is a fire-safety education program for second-grade students in North Canton. First-grade students go through the . 


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