October 15 was a great day to hold our second annual Touch-a-Truck event at the Main Street Fire Station. Many of our local agencies came to show our kids the great apparatus and equipment that we have to offer: fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, loaders, grader, dump trucks, plow truck, boat, utv, snowmobile, command vehicle, just to name many of our “trucks”!
We were joined by Fire Explorers Post 74, New London Fire Department, New Hampshire State Police, New Hampshire Marine Patrol, New Hampshire Fish and Game, New Hampshire Department of Transportation Andover and Franklin, New Hampshire Department of Safety Incident Management, Town of Andover Highway Department, Andover Fire, Andover EMS, Andover Police, Andover Library, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Andover Emergency Services Auxiliary.
Our Fire Explorers, based out of Salisbury Fire Department, demonstrated an airpack maze they crawled through made out of pallets. The purpose of the airpack maze is to teach familiarity with the airpack in confined spaces. The Explorers present at the event ranged from 15 to 18 years old.
Our Fire Department, with the help of the Fire Explorers, demonstrated how to use the Jaws of Life tools. These tools allow emergency workers to gain entry to a car for extrication in the event of an emergency, when that car has been in an accident and has damage preventing entry.
The Explorers and Fire Department started by removing the windshield, shattering the remaining windows, removing doors, cutting the roof off and, finally, had the opportunity to get into the car. Our Fire Explorers worked closely with Andover Fire, with the help of their lead advisor and firefighter, Jeff Miller.
October was Fire Safety Prevention month. This year’s focus for Fire Prevention Week™, October 8-14, was cooking safety.: “Cooking safety starts with YOU. Pay attention to fire prevention.™” We decided to demonstrate frying a turkey:
“The reason frozen turkeys explode, at its core, has to do with differences in density. There is a difference in density between oil and water and differences in the density of water between its solid, liquid and gas states. When these density differences interact in just the right way, you get an explosion.”
Never having done this before, we certainly researched it, then hoped we would have the reaction we were looking for. Sure enough, our frozen turkey went into the boiling oil and the explosion happened. Flames shot out of the turkey fryer! Short and sweet, but eye-catching and to the point.
While we hoped for a large turnout, inviting many schools, “big kids” are always welcome too. We hope you can join us next year. We are thankful for all our volunteers. So many familiar faces behind the emergency vehicles and equipment are local to us. We appreciate everyone who took their Sunday to put some smiles on the children’s faces!