Area fire stations hosting open houses for prevention week
TUSCARAWAS COUNTY (WJER) (Oct. 10, 2022) – Fire departments throughout the county are holding open houses this week to get members of the communities they serve thinking about what to do in the event of a fire and how to prevent them.
Dennison has one tonight until 8 pm with free tours of the station, firefighter meet-and-greets, and activities aimed at teaching kids the ins and outs of fire safety. Firefighter and EMT Kyle Milligan says reaching them at an early age is important.
“We actually had a kid here a couple of days ago. We had a small fire, and he knew exactly what to do. He got out and got his brother out of the house in time for us to get there and do what we needed to do.”
The Uhrichsville Fire Department is holding its yearly fire safety open house Wednesday from 5 to 8 pm. Firefighter Shane Dorland says it will have a BBQ truck, smoke-detector giveaways, and opportunities for attendees to learn how to help save someone experiencing a medical emergency .
“We’re gonna have hands-only CPR at our station. It basically gets the public interaction with doing CPR just with their hands instead of having to do the traditional hands and mouth-to-mouth CPR,” he says. “We’ll also have a couple of things for the little kiddos. We’ll have a smokehouse for them to come into, do a little bit of fire prevention education with them in there, and also they’ll be able to spray the hose.”
The Mineral City Fire Station will also be opening its doors for a similar event the same evening from 6 to 8. Chief Sam Moore says firefighters will be there demonstrating some of the equipment they use and taking signups for the program that puts free smoke detectors in homes throughout the village and Sandy Township.
“So we’ll come out and install them and everything for them,” he says. “We’ll have kids’ safety stuff here also like home safety, how to escape, and they’ll be a bunch of brochures and stuff to hand out to them, coloring books, and things like that.”
The New Philadelphia Fire Station has an open house Thursday evening from 5 to 8, while the Strasburg and Bolivar Fire Departments are both hosting fire safety and prevention events on Saturday. We’ll have more details on those later this week.