Sisters students get graphic lesson in fire safety

As the old adage goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and never would the statement be more appropriate than at Sisters Middle School last Friday. Captain David Wheeler, the local fire marshal, joined forces with middle school teachers Marti Dale and Julie Patton to provide some valuable fire safety experience for their seventh grade health class.

The class covered several areas of personal safety.

"We talked about fireworks safety and disaster preparedness, including fires, floods, earthquakes. Today, we had the escape trailer there so that they could practice getting out of a house full of smoke," said Captain Wheeler.

Although the escape trailer has been available for about five years, Friday was the first time the Sisters School District has taken advantage of the resource.

"This is the first year that we have done this, and we are really excited about it for the kids," said Dale, "I think this will be a great learning experience."

According to Captain Wheeler, the escape trailer belongs to the fire prevention co-op.

"It is a shared resource. We take it every other year or so to Black Butte School, but this was the first time to a school in Sisters. However, a lot of the kids have seen it at the fair. That is how we got invited to go to the middle school; some of the kids were talking about it from being at the fair," said Captain Wheeler.

The escape trailer is equipped to provide some practical experience in remaining safe in a very dangerous situation.

"We felt that this would be a good addition for the students of the health class. We have been studying safety, and this provides practical experience for them. It is like taking theory and then bringing it to the lab to see how it works. They can take what they have learned and apply it," said Dale.

Small groups of students entered the smoke-filled mock room under the personal guidance of Captain Wheeler where they were instructed to stay low to be able to breathe better air. As a small group of girls from the class came to enter, he gravely said: "The boys just left squealing and screaming. Let's see if you do any better."

The girls exited the window of the mock room with great aplomb, with much less excited noise than the boys, bringing a smile to Captain Wheeler's face.

The experiment is a real-life learning outreach of the health class, and Dale believes that it is a valuable addition to the course of study. "One of the units that we cover is personal safety, and we have studied several lessons on fire safety. This is the culmination of that course of study with the fire escape trailer. Giving the kids a chance to be in a mock situation could be invaluable to them if they were ever caught in a real situation," she said.

The escape trailer remained at the school for the better part of the morning while small groups of students repeatedly entered the dark space and found out how disorienting a real crisis can become. Then, gathering their wits about them, the youth opened the window and emerged from the darkened and smoke-filled room to run to safety.