Public Education and Fire Prevention
The S.A.F.E. program is a Fire Prevention Education grant that fire departments can apply for through the Executive Office of Public Safety. The SAFE program is designed to equip elementary, intermediate, and high school students with skills for recognizing the dangers of fire, specifically, the fire hazards that smoking-related materials pose. The program utilizes firefighters to teach fire and life safety education. It is our plan to implement the SAFE program in Easton over a period of four years.
On October 31, 1995 the Easton Fire Department was awarded $10,000 by Governor William Weld at a ceremony at the State House in Boston. The Grant will allow us to defray the cost of replacing a firefighter dedicated to the SAFE program initiatives. It allowed the Easton Fire Department to purchase fire safety instructional materials in the needed quantity. The Easton Fire Department has never before had the funding to provide an educational program such as SAFE to the school children of Easton.
The efforts of Katherine Kelly, Health Coordinator Easton Schools, Firefighters David Beals, Thomas Nicholson, and Jeffrey Webster and Fire Department Secretary Lillian McGranachan made the first year of delivering fire education to grades K-3 a success.
In November 1996 the department was awarded $8,500. This will help the department teach grades 4-6 along with K-3 the dangers of fire and smoking related materials.