A Different View of Public Fire and Life Safety Prevention and Education Activities

By: Michael A. Wieder
October 2005

No one would argue that public fire and life safety prevention and education programs are a duty of all fire departments 365 days per year. While some fire departments are diligent in this sense, the vast majority of fire departments focus a significant portion of their public fire and life safety prevention and education activities during this time of the year. Schools are starting a new academic year; local, county, and state fairs provide an opportunity to interact with large numbers of the public; and as a nation we are focused on the traditional National Fire Prevention Week that is observed on the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire each October.

It has been my experience that many fire departments have well-established plans for how they handle public fire and life safety prevention and education activities during this portion of the year. Firefighters brush up on their policies for fire station tours; schedules are developed to ensure all day-cares and schools get fire prevention visits; booths and hand-out materials are prepared for fairs, shopping malls, and other places of public assembly; and we place advertisements in local newspapers. We dutifully participate in these activities, answer lots of questions, and hand out loads of printed safety information.

Once this period is over, often during the preparation of the annual fire department report on activities, we note how many visits were made, how many people were contacted during prevention activities, and how much materials were handed out. The purpose of these reports is to show how many people our public fire and life safety prevention and education program impacted.

But the real truth of the matter is that we really have no way knowing how many people were truly impacted by our efforts. In traditional educational settings we have the opportunity to measure the results of our training by testing the participants. We do not have this opportunity with the people to whom we deliver our life safety programs. Maybe, over time, we can claim success when decreasing trends in fire losses, injuries, and deaths are noted. Beyond that there is little way to measure our true impact.

Since becoming personally involved with the Fire Safety Literacy Project, I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how we impact the public. I, like most other firefighters, have spent my fair share of time handing out safety information at public events. I have given information to students in school and asked them to take it home to their parents. On rare occasions I can remember discussions with my peers wondering how many people really read the information we provide and then take action on it. The question that never occurred to me before becoming involved in this project was “I wonder how many of these people can actually read this information?” I doubt that many fire service public educators have ever considered the fact that the information we routinely hand out is above the reading level of a significant percentage of the people we hand it to.

It is estimated that 90 million people in the United States of America have a low level of reading skills. This is typically defined as reading English at less than a sixth grade level. A review of much of the life safety handout information that is typically given to adults by fire departments has revealed that most of this information is written at a substantially higher level than the 6th grade. Thus, a significant percentage of our population is unable to read and understand the information we are providing. This may be due to reading disabilities, lack of education, or lack of understanding of the English language.

This is a serious problem. People who fall into the low literacy skill definition are often disproportionately likely to fall victim to fire or other preventable accidents. Because of shame or embarrassment, few if any adults we hand this important information to are likely to let us know that they are unable to read the information. They simply take the hand out, smile and say thank you, and move on. This information never truly gets transferred to the person who needs it. So how do we reach these people who really need this information?

Many of these people may be reached by reaching outside the proverbial fire service public education box. Virtually every community or county within the United States has adult literacy programs whose purpose is to assist people with low literacy skills in increasing their reading capabilities. The people who work in these programs are as much dedicated to improving their communities as are any firefighters. We are similar people with similar goals: to make our communities better places and to improve the lives of the people who live within them. By partnering together, fire departments and adult literacy programs can take important fire and life safety messages to all parts of the community, at a level that can be understood by the people receiving them.

An enormous amount of credit must be given to the Home Safety Council (HSC) and its leadership for making this important realization and taking action to address it. By forming a strong partnership with ProLiteracy America and Oklahoma State University’s Fire Protection Publications (FPP; headquarters for the International Fire Service Training Association) and using funding provided by the Department of Homeland Security Fire Prevention and Safety Grant program, life safety materials have been developed that can be introduced into local level literacy programs. These materials share the dual role of assisting the participants in increasing their reading skills, while learning important life safety information in the process. Easy reading materials have been developed that provide information on developing home escape plans, exiting the home during a fire, and placement and testing of smoke alarms.

The chances of truly impacting the life safety of the people in these programs are good, even if all they do is use the reading materials in their course of studies. However, fire departments have a golden opportunity to magnify this impact by working together with the literacy programs to further assist their clients. Fire departments can use gatherings of program participants as an opportunity to deliver face-to-face information. Participants in the programs can be brought to fire stations for tours and additional information. Participants can be encouraged to allow firefighters to perform home safety surveys to identify potential hazards and to install smoke alarms where they are lacking.

The program information that has been developed by this partnership provides detailed information on how fire departments can support the Fire Safety Literacy Program and what their role within the program should be. Best of all, these materials are free of charge. Lack of financial resources in prevention programs is not an excuse for failing to explore and enter into this program. This is one of the most unique and effective new public fire and life safety prevention and education programs to have been developed in decades. You are encouraged to be on the cutting edge of implementing this program. Your community and the people you serve are counting on you to take this opportunity and use it to improve their quality of life.

FPP and Oklahoma State University are proud and privileged to be a part of this partnership. All three organizations (HSC, ProLiteracy, and FPP) are the best and most highly respected organizations in their respective fields. Their partnership will undoubtedly show benefits in the reduction of fire losses and deaths. FPP looks forward to continuing to work with these partners as we take the program beyond basic fire and life safety issues and begin to address natural disasters and other hazards that affect people’s lives. As we have seen dramatically and tragically in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the same populations who are threatened by fire and “common” life safety hazards are also vulnerable to larger, less common disasters. We will continue our work to ensure that these people get the information they need to reduce their vulnerability to these hazards s well. Thus the question remains…what are you doing about it?

About the author: Mike Wieder, a 26-year fire service veteran, serves as Assistant Director and Managing Editor at IFSTA/Fire Protection Publications.