PITTSTON — Joe Kelly has been a fighting fires for over 30 years, and has seen his fair share of casuaties due to the lack of knowledge.
Now, thanks to a program on a website called Fire-Ed, in which the Pittston City firefighter is involved, he’s hoping knowledge of fires will increase and casualties will decrease.
“This focus is teaching children fire safety that’s interactive,” Kelly said. “This company in Canada developed this, and I helped develop it. We research things and put together this interactive program on a compuer and a website and it’s designed for kids ages 5 to 17.”
The hands-on program involves firefighters doing interactive lessons with children to teach them more about fire safety. Once they’re done, the children then go to www.fire-ed.com to take a test about what they learned.
Afterwards, the students can advance in the program to take more courses, as well as more advanced ones, that Fire-Ed firefighters and facilitators offer in their respective areas.
According to Tracy Last, developer of Fire-Ed in Maple Ride, Vancouver, Canada, when a student hits the age of 13 they can assist the fire facilitator in teaching, and when they hit 18 they can become facilitators themselves and take a course on how to teach the program.
Last said this program is a way to keep students learning by doing.
“In the past, children would be brought into a classroom and showed a video or read a storybook, and they can get that glazed-over look,” she said. “Sure, it’s fun and they say they did fire safety, but there was no way to measure the outcome. With Fire-Ed, they actually take a course and it keeps them fully involved. They’re touching, feeling, moving, active, taking ownership of the program and then they’re tested afterwards.”
The website also offers videos for children to watch from other demonstrations to keep them sharp and help learn more.
Last said Kelly reached out to her in 2014 on LinkedIn about the website and offered any help he could, saying that not only would this save the lives of citizens, but of firefighters, as well.
“Fire-Ed helps firefighters because they’re the ones going into burning buildings, but have no idea how many residents are in the building,” Last said. “They have to go in and do a rescue and that puts their life at risk. It all boils down to house fires are preventable. If this can help people be educated on how to get out of house fires, they can prevent firefighertes from coming in to put their lives in danger.”
Fire-Ed is still a work in progress, but Last said firefighters from all over the United States and Canada are reaching out to her about being part of the program.
Kelly said he’ll do Fire-Ed demonstrations in Pittston in the near future, but will also travel to several other areas.
“I’ll do classes wherever,” he said. “I’m just trying to get them launched in this area, New York City, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Maryland. I just got a gentleman in Virginia who’s interested and we have several in California. It’s been a process trying to get to everyone we can.”
