St. Robert Fire Engineer introduced the city’s newest firefighter resource at Monday night’s city council meeting. Fully outfitted with a fire helmet and bunker gear, “Fire Pup” is ready for service.
“What’s his starting salary?” asked Alderman Theresa Cook.
“A few dog biscuits?” joked Alderman Todd Williams.
Despite the jokes, Fire Engineer Tom Dickey said Fire Pup has a serious special duty assignment: reaching the children of the new Freedom Elementary School.
Traditionally, the Waynesville R-VI School District had elementary schools in the city of Waynesville and on Fort Leonard Wood. That changed when Freedom Elementary, the district’s largest, opened in St. Robert, and that created new issues for St. Robert city leaders.
“As you’re well aware, Freedom Elementary is right next to us,” Dickey said. “When Freedom Elementary opened, we realized we had a whole new fire prevention dilemma.”
St. Robert firefighters decided to try to solve that dilemma with a new tactic: purchasing a special curriculum to educate elementary school children about fire safety. That’s expensive, and Dickey said he applied for grants to help the district pay the cost.
At Monday night’s meeting, representatives of FM Global of Rhode Island, a property insurance company, presented a check for a $1,475 grant that was used to purchase the Fire Pup costume and curriculum.
According to a company press release, FM Global runs a competitive grant program for fire departments that provides funding quarterly to departments around the country that develop the best innovative programs to educate their communities and reduce the number of fires.
Cook, who works for the Waynesville R-VI School District, asked how soon Dickey plans to begin the fire education curriculum in Freedom Elementary.
Dickey said that will start as soon as possible.
“We’ve got some programs going on already in the schools; this will be a monthly thing,” Dickey said.
Cook asked for more details after reading information about the Fire Pup curriculum.
“I see this goes up to age 14; are you planning to do this in the middle school also?” Cook asked.
Probably not, Dickey said.
“The middle school is in Waynesville’s jurisdiction and they have their own programs,” Dickey said. “But we would be available to help if they request it.”
Dickey said there’s a history of cooperation between the county’s fire departments and the Fort Leonard Wood Fire Department has helped in the past with off-post educational activities since many of the students living off post are the children of Fort Leonard Wood military families or civilian employees.
Interviewed last week, Dickey said the Fire Pup provides specific help to his department in teaching fire safety to the youngest children.
“We have a constantly running proactive fire prevention program, but in the past, we’ve always had difficulties reaching the younger age groups,” Dickey said. “I think any firefighters like educating children, but (this provides) the capability to take a child who is six or seven years old and they retain that knowledge.”
That’s an important age to reach children, Dickey said.
“The leading cause nationwide of juvenile fire-setting is curiosity,” Dickey said. “It’s not that kids are trying to be bad; they don’t understand the potential dangers of even the smallest cigarette left in an ashtray. They don’t understand that it can burn their entire house down and kill their entire family.
“If we reach them now and dispel their curiosity, we can teach them there are safe ways to deal with fire,” Dickey said. “If we reach them now, they are not on their back porch with a Bic lighter lighting magazines on fire because they think its cool and nobody has taught them any different.”