Safety first was the message of the day when Parkhead – our resource centre in Ashington for adults with learning disabilities – received a visit by officers from Northumberland Fire Service.
The hands-on event gave our service users the opportunity to see and handle some of the equipment used in their day-to-day work – such as cutting equipment and breathing apparatus – and everyone was really surprised at how heavy it was.
The officers also gave an interesting talk on fire safety and were happy to answer lots of questions, including ‘how do you put out a chip pan fire?’, ‘what is the heaviest piece of equipment?’ and ‘what has been your strangest or scariest call out?’
“It was a fun and informative visit and we all thoroughly enjoyed it,” said Parkhead manager, Claire Graham. “We learned a lot a lot about fire safety and our service users had so many interesting questions to ask that the session ended up running longer than expected.”
Of course, no-one could resist some moments of fun trying on the bright yellow helmets and, reportedly, the highlight of the day was seeing a bright red fire engine arrive at the centre.