Every year, the Mattapoisett Fire Department Open House draws in the community, igniting the imaginations of the little ones and extinguishing ignorance of fire safety with live demonstrations and fun, educational activities for the kids in observance of National Fire Prevention Week.
“To us, it’s our big day of the year,” said Lieutenant Justin Dubois. The Thursday, October 8 event is the Fire Department’s chance to reach out to the community to get out its message of fire prevention. “It’s a good day in that we make it a family event that people can come to.”
One of the highlights, said Dubois, was the live fire demonstration that showed the nature of how a fire in the home can spread, stressing the importance of working smoke alarms.
Firefighters set up a small model of a living room with a couch, loveseat, curtains – coming as close as a real scenario that they can while still containing the small-scale fire.
“It’s to show how quickly a fire can spread,” said Dubois. “We had plenty of guys around to keep it mellow, but it … went fairly quickly.”
Dubois stressed caution with some of the many common causes of a fire in the living room – smoking, extension cords covered by carpets, and overloaded electrical outlets are just a few of them.
“We also did a vehicle extraction demonstration that shows the Jaws of Life and how they work,” said Dubois. “We pretty much took the car apart to show people, in a car accident, what we do.”
Fire Prevention Week was started in 1922 to commemorate the Great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871, that burned for two days. It is traditionally observed on the week of October 9, Sunday through Saturday.
The Great Chicago Fire killed over 250 people, left 100,000 people homeless, and destroyed 17,400 structures.
By Jean Perry
