Unless you know a firefighter in your life, it’s not common to see them and get to talk to them on the job.
And, as Todd Polly, volunteer public educator with NOTL Fire & Emergency Services puts it, the times they do see them, when something bad is happening, doesn’t give people an opportunity to talk with them properly.
“If people see us during emergencies, it’s already a bad day,” he said.
Polly, along with firefighters and volunteers from the local fire department, was at the Meridian Credit Union Arena on Saturday afternoon for a public skating event promoting fire safety and prevention.
“We’d rather meet them here, answer questions and prevent crises,” he said.
The event is part of the fire department’s efforts to reach out more to the community. Taking the lead from past public recommendations, it started a volunteer public education team last January.
The “Skating with Firefighters” event was free to enter if skaters provided a short video of themselves testing their home smoke alarms. Otherwise, standard public skating fees applied.
Polly said he wants to normalize proactive safety concerns and ensure people feel comfortable with their firefighters.
“If people go home with one or two things they didn’t know before, I’m happy,” he said.
Fire prevention officer Dylan Skubel said its community outreach work is about strengthening the trust people have in them, while addressing ongoing issues preventing fire safety, such as not testing smoke alarms at home.
“Only working smoke alarms save lives,” he said. “Test your smoke alarms monthly and make sure that when the clocks change, you change your batteries — and all smoke alarms expire after 10 years, even if they’re hard-wired.”
Skubel said that the new public education team’s creation followed Fort Erie’s success doing the same thing with its fire department. After some discussion, NOTL’s fire department decided to try it themselves.
“We’ve had a lot of interest from groups in the community asking us to come out and set up and we just didn’t have the staff of the time to get out there and do these events,” he said.
“We were relying a lot on our firefighters.”
Ten volunteers are currently on the public education team, planning a presentation at Crossroads Public School in May, as well as summer events and looking for more opportunities, like the skating event, to spread awareness.
“They’ve been set up the community centre a couple of times just talking to people with fire safety.”
The firefighters’ mascot, Sparky, joined Saturday’s skate, and attendees received tote bags, safety pamphlets and firefighter merch from a table set up at the front of the arena.
