BURRILLVILLE – The “Seasons Of Safety” kids coloring campaign kicks off with this fall home fire safety and burn prevention coloring cartoon, featuring the Fearless Dino Protector Squad.
It’s the end of Daylight Savings Time on Sunday, Nov., 6. We all turned our clocks back one hour at 2 a.m. and wait for that dreaded 4 o’clock hour sundown to begin.
It’s also the same time fire chiefs, firefighters and fire prevention officers recommend that everyone replace their smoke alarm batteries in their homes, apartments, offices and buildings. Smoke alarms should be securely placed near ceilings and working properly on every level of your structure. Fresh batteries installed in smoke alarms provide a certain level of safety. Another important fire safety and burn prevention tactic would be to practice exit drills in the home and anywhere else people live and work every single day.
This week’s Sunday feature is a coloring cartoon informing kids what they should do in case of a fire in their home or apartment building. Kids should drop low under the smoke and crawl to safety outdoors. Practicing this with your children could dramatically change the outcome if a fire should occur where you live. It helps reduce fear and also gives a child a sense of calm because they remember what they practiced with their siblings and parents.
Most importantly; once you all get out – stay out! There is nothing worth going back into a burning building to retrieve and it also puts firefighters in harm’s way if they need to go inside to search for someone that did not exit outside to an established safe place near the home. When firefighters and first responders arrive on scene, tell them everyone escaped the fire safely so they can focus on putting out that burning building and help keep them safer in the process.
Over the coming weeks, we will be focusing on home fire safety and burn prevention content, along with holiday season safety and winter season safety coloring cartoons for the kids. Share them. Print them out for your kids, family members’ kids and friends’ kids. If you are a teacher, daycare staff, librarian, community center director, police officer, firefighter, child safety advocate, family clinic or pediatric doctor’s office, then these creative kids safety coloring cartoons are perfect for any child and family during the upcoming fall, holiday and winter seasons. It could potentially save lives. I know that they do.
Everyone I’ve listed above across the United States tells me that my kids safety coloring cartoons distributed to children and families in their communities directly helped to prevent injuries and also saved lives because the kids did what the cartoon characters told them to do to help keep them safer. My creative materials actually saved lives. Safe Kids USA Coalition Directors across the USA attending a Safe Kids USA/Worldwide PrevCon in the state of Maryland told me firsthand that my coloring cartoon handout materials and related product safety reminders kept children safer, out of the ER, hospital and saved their lives.
Color with your kids and talk with them about these safety messages, and please practice escape routes and establish safe meeting places in case of a fire. Stay fire safe!
Jim Weicherding is a Burrillville resident, and the founder and creator of an award-winning traffic safety effort Seasons of Safety. Weicherding contributes kids’ coloring cartoons, which can be printed and used to help parents discuss safety issues with their children. He has a long list of police officers and firefighters in his family and has worked with law enforcement and firefighters in a creative public safety capacity for more than two decades.
