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Date: 3/2/2021
CHICOPEE/SPRINGFIELD – The Baker-Polito Administration recently announced that 239 municipal fire departments would receive nearly $2 million in grants to fund fire education programs for both children and seniors. The Springfield Fire Department and Chicopee Fire Department were two local departments that received grant money. Both departments received Student Awareness of Fire Education (S.A.F.E) and Senior SAFE grants.
The Chicopee Fire Department received a total of $7,680 in S.A.F.E money and $3,019 in Senior SAFE. The Springfield Fire Department received a total of $11,380 in S.A.F.E. money and $3,219 in Senior SAFE. Springfield Fire Captain Drew Piemonte spoke on the importance of receiving this money and bringing fire education to the community.
“The program allows for firefighters and teachers to work together to provide fire and life safety education to young people. That contributed to one of the major accomplishments we had throughout the state. No children have died in fires in Massachusetts since last year. The average number of children dying in fires annually dropped by 78 percent since the S.A.F.E. program began,” said Piemonte.
Piemonte also spoke on the Senior SAFE program.
“The Senior SAFE program is basically the same thing but it’s providing life safety education and fire safety education to seniors,” he said.
Before COVID-19, Piemonte said firefighters would work directly in classrooms and with seniors to provide fire safety education. For now, the education has shifted.
“Our prevention division adapted to doing webinars and they’re using video productions to reach the children in schools virtually,” he said.
Working to educate vulnerable members of the community on fire education is extremely important, according to Piemonte.
“Any education on fire and life safety that we can provide any citizen is valuable for everybody in the community. We try to target our most vulnerable. Young children are curious and they’re vulnerable just by curiosity alone and our senior citizens are an older population that need to be educated on fire and life safety too. It’s the importance of not leaving cooking unattended on the stove, having working fire extinguishers, working smoke detectors and your points of exit,” he said.
Lt. Katie Collins-Kalbaugh of the Community Risk Reduction Office at the Chicopee Fire Department also spoke on how Chicopee will use the grant money. According to Kalbaugh, at least 50 percent of the grant money will go towards school education programs. The Chicopee Fire Department works to teach important fire safety topics to children based on the age and grade students are in.
The department provides kids with lessons on fire safety and also take-home materials to help enforce the learning. Examples of past lessons include creating a home fire escape plan and creating fake smoke alarms in class to discuss their importance, said Kalbaugh.
Kalbaugh also said the money will be used for community-based programs. With the Senior SAFE money, the department works to install smoke alarms in homes of adults over the age of 60. Many older homes have outdated fire alarms or fire alarms that don’t work, she said. The department uses the funding to buy code compliant smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and install them free of charge in these residents’ homes. While there, seniors are also given tips on safe cooking, planning for fires and fire escape plans, said Kalbaugh.
Much like Springfield, many fire education programs were canceled in Chicopee last year due to COVID-19. Kalbaugh said the department pivoted to continue to provide the necessary information to young kids and senior citizens.
“We had to come up with a new way to do things,” she said.
This included distributing fire safety information in reusable shopping bags when senior citizens came to pick up meals at the senior center. During Chicopee’s reverse parade in Nov. 2020, the fire department also handed out fire safety bags to families with important safety information, tips and projects for kids to complete.
Recently, the Chicopee Fire Department was able to give in-person fire education lessons to students in St. Stanislaus School and St. Joan of Arc School.
“It was very exciting to get back into schools and do the fire safety lessons,” said Kalbaugh. “We hope as students return to schools in Chicopee that we’ll be able to do the same thing in Chicopee Public Schools.”
Like Piemonte, Kalbaugh spoke of what a great achievement it was that no children died of fire-related causes in 2020.
“That means kids are getting these lessons, hearing these lessons and they’re safer in the home from the dangers of fire so we need to continue to provide those lessons and keep them safe. Some of the lessons that they learn, they’re lessons that apply throughout their entire life,” she said.