Picture this: Your fire department responds to a devastating house fire. Every local media outlet turns up, including network TV affiliates. The cameras are pointed at you. You head over to their outstretched microphones, but before you speak, you hold up a prop with a home fire sprinkler and say, “If this home had been protected by fire sprinklers, you wouldn’t be here tonight.”
Now that’s a powerful media message, about an important topic. Truth be told, sprinklers should be part of the official story of every house fire in your service area. When there’s a fire in a sprinklered home, it’s an important learning opportunity to help the media, residents and local officials understand that a fire sprinkler is a powerful life-safety tool. And when there’s a fire in a home without fire sprinklers, the lack of this life-safety technology must be noted in the context of the losses, otherwise the media and the public only understand part of the story.
HFSC wants to make talking about home fire sprinklers in your community easier. We have been fundraising to design a customized education box that will store a home fire sprinkler display along with core educational messages. These displays will be ideal with media, which thrives on images. They’ll also be helpful when you make presentations, talk with homebuilders, and host visitors at your stations.
With sufficient funding, HFSC will produce 500 of these educational tools and offer them to BUILT FOR LIFE Fire Departments, at no charge.
We’re making progress! We’ve already received a valuable donation of sprinklers. But we need funds to put this powerful educational tool in the hands of fire department educators by spring.
Will you help us do that? Your tax-deductible donation today can make this idea a reality. For 20 years now, HFSC has been creating and sharing educational resources and information across the U.S. and Canada. We want to keep doing that, but we need your help. Thank you for partnering with us!