Sixth graders learn how to use fire extinguishers

NEGAUNEE — Many of us have fire extinguishers at our home or workplace, but oftentimes, we don’t stop to think about how they work until we really need them. As part of Fire Prevention Week, sixth graders at Negaunee Middle School got an important lesson in extinguisher usage.

Firefighters from both the city and township shut down the street in front of the school in order to light a fire for students to practice their skills on. The demonstration has been an annual event for sixth graders for over a decade, and finding volunteers to quench the flames is never an issue.

“We say, ‘who would like to put out the fire?’ We don’t ever have to really pull somebody out – you have forty hands that go up,” said Negaunee Township Fire Department First Captain Dale Rogers. “A lot of the kids take this information home, because there’s surprisingly a lot of parents that have extinguishers, [but] they have no idea how to use them.”

In addition to numerous safety tips, students learned to remember the word ‘PASS,’ an acronym which reminds fire extinguisher users to ‘pull the pin, aim, squeeze, and sweep.’ After the day’s lesson, firefighters congratulated the winners of this year’s Fire Prevention Week essay contest.