Danger Rangers at Pontefract

An amazing morning at Pontefract Fire Station at the request of the Council's Health Development Unit. Local councillors were invited to see an initiative that is aimed to make primary school pupils more aware of some of the host of things that they need to be aware of and can do to keep safe.

I tagged along with a group of 12 pupils and a teacher from a local school who were part of a group of sixty there for the morning and followed them through sessions:

With the West Yorkshire Fire Service and what to do if the fire alarm goes off at home. Including the way to make sure that you do not dash out of your bedroom straight into the teeth of a fire (touch the handle with the back of your hand, so you realise it is hot before you grab it). How to make a 999 call and the fact that 112 is a zone specific service that tracks you if you have a mobile.

A briefing with a safety officer looking at a wall sized graphic of a kitchen and the children spotted 33 dangers that were present from pictures that showed open bottles of bleach through, vases of flowers full of water on shelves above the toaster, to the pans of boiling liquid on the stove with the handle sticking out for the attentions of innocent toddlers.

Then with the Health Authority team who warned about the dangers and hazards that can be found lying around on streets and in parks, including what not to do about discarded needles, or glass bottles of booze lying around and the way to put some distance between yourself and an adult that tries to grab you.

A session on road safety from the WMDC's Road safety Team where the children turned to detectives to identify what may have gone wrong in a mocked up road accident that put passengers and pedestrians at greater risk. The quality of responses and the savvy of these nine to ten year olds was impressive and then you think about adults and the messes that they can get themselves into.

We finished with a briefing and walk through a series of harrowing scenarios with a British Transport Policeman about what can happen when people young or old take dares, vandalise or stray on to railway tracks, that electricity from overhead power lines can jump up to three metres when it is trying to escape and if you happen to be grounded and in the way to earth you may not be lucky if you survive.

This all may seem bleak but actually the way that the information was delivered and the style of the individuals concerned was such that I am sure it was really good learning experience and those children present hopefully have some good ideas to take away.

I then thought back to my primary school experiences and the differences, the main thing was that a number of the dangers that we explored today did not exist or were not significant when Walsh was a nipper. Good luck to them all and I hope that this particular programme gets as much of a fair wind as we can give it.