New program brings life saving messages to Hanscom youth

  • Published
  • By Rhonda Siciliano
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
HANSCOM AFB, Mass. --  A new program unveiled Feb. 26 by the Hanscom Fire Department captured the attention of pre-schoolers and caregivers at the Hanscom Child Development Center.

In the first of many educational road shows designed to raise awareness of the Juvenile Fire Setters Program, base fire department personnel educated pre-schoolers about the dangers associated with experimenting and playing with fire.

"A juvenile fire setter is anyone under the age of 18 who experiments or plays with fire," said Robert Coonce, Hanscom Fire Prevention Services and assistant fire chief. "Statistics show that children who experiment with fire are responsible for over half of all fire arson cases and 82 percent of juvenile fire starters will repeat fire play if the appropriate intervention services are not provided."

The Juvenile Fire Setters program seeks to bring age-appropriate education about the consequences of fire play to the young people on base. It also seeks to help community members recognize the warning signs of a juvenile fire starter and offer assistance and intervention services to parents and others who might be concerned about a child's experimentation and fascination with fire.

"Interest in fire, for children, is natural; setting fire is not," Mr. Coonce said. "We've developed this program with materials and messages that are sensitive to the special growth and developmental needs of each group of children that we speak to. We started with the 3 to 5 year olds because that is generally the age when children develop their curiosity about fire."

For the pre-schoolers, Mr. Coonce engaged them in interactive activities, at one point bringing out a box filled with a variety of items such as lighters, matches, and toys, and asked the children's help in identifying whether each item was a tool or toy.

The children also learned about good fires versus bad fires while Mr. Coonce emphasized key fire safety lessons such as stop, drop and roll and what to do when a smoke detector goes off in the house.

Each child that attended the presentation was sent home with a packet of information about the program and key items for parents to review with their children. "We hope the materials will help families reinforce messages that they may have already given to their children as well as bring up some new discussion topics about this important issue," Mr. Coonce said.

The Fire Department will be reaching out to the base community to spread the message about the Juvenile Fire Setters program.

"Unfortunately, we have had a couple of fire incidents involving juveniles here at Hanscom," said Robert Hildreth, base fire chief. "We were fortunate these incidents were small and no one was seriously injured. With this program we hope to prevent any future incidents by working together in partnership with the base community to raise awareness of the dangers of fire play for juveniles and prevent a tragedy from happening."

The new program was introduced to students at the School Age program and will be a topic for discussion at the Youth Center's Night Hoops program in March. The Fire Department will also have a table set up with information on the Juvenile Fire Setters program at the Team Lean Challenge Expo and Voluntary Protection Program Fair on March 6 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For more information about the Juvenile Fire Setters program contact Robert Coonce at (781) 377-9402.