Smokey Bear may have lost some of his notoriety, but East Lansing children can still have fun while learning the importance of fire safety.
For the second straight year, the Phi Delta Theta fraternity teamed up with the East Lansing Fire Department to host an afternoon of fire safety awareness for area children.
About 200 people came to tour the ambulance and fire truck in front of the fraternity house at 626 Cowley Ave., to try their hands at spraying a fire hose, check out a variety of fire safety booths and see the fire department’s musical performance skit, “Pumper & Pals.”
“This month is Fire Safety Month,” East Lansing firefighter Bill Drury said. “Every opportunity we have to educate the public about fire safety is good.”
Drury, a 12-year veteran of the department, said activities like this help the community understand what the fire department really does.
“It creates a positive light for the fire department and what we do,” he said. “We provide a lot of services to the community and events like this let us show them off.”
Some of the indoor activities included learning how to test a smoke detector, understanding the difference between toys, such as a football, and tools, such as matches, the importance of having a planned escape route and how to crawl under smoke.
Phi Delta Theta philanthropy chairman Mike Pawlik said the concept of fire safety has special meaning for the fraternity, after two fires at the house in the 1970s.
“We had major fires here in 1972 and again in 1976,” said Pawlik, a marketing sophomore. “The idea for a fire safety day came from last year’s philanthropy chair Jason Canfield, and it was a success so we decided to do it again.”
And fraternity President Blair Hess said he’d deem this year another success.
“We ran out of hot dogs - we had 150 hot dogs in the beginning - and there has been a steady stream of people all day long,” the interdisciplinary studies senior said. “This is just a great way to connect with our neighbors because we’re not really in a student neighborhood, we live around a lot of families.”
The Gordon family was among the neighbors enjoying the warm fall day and its activities.
Brenda Gordon brought her three children, Matt, 8, Emily, 6, and Amy, 4, to the house.
“They love ‘Pumper & Pals,’” Brenda Gordon said. “They’ve seen them at school and we went to see them at the firehouse during a pancake breakfast they had there. We also just like to get out and enjoy the things going on in the community.”
