Cherokee County Fire And Emergency Services: Cherokee County Students To Learn More About Firefighting Careers

Press release from the Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services:

July 30, 2021

Cherokee County students have an amazing opportunity to build their scientific knowledge through their Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Xplorlabs program.  The program focuses on engaging middle-school students during a time in their educational lives when interest in science is shown to decrease dramatically.  This school year, the Xplorlabs Fire Forensics: Claims and Evidence module will be offered as part of the eighth grade STEM Connections course at all Cherokee County School District middle schools. Cherokee County Fire & Emergency Services recently became a part of the program to teach and educate students about fire dynamics in the classroom.  According to Cherokee County Assistant Fire Chief, Eddie Robinson, “This program gives us the opportunity to connect with these students during an early age.  It also gives us the opportunity to educate students about our Fire Explorer program which is designed for young adults who are interested in learning about a career in the fire service.”  Firefighters go into the classrooms to do “live fire” experiments, with the supervision of their teachers, using items like candles and shoeboxes.  “It’s a great partnership with the school system. Plus, the City of Woodstock Fire Department is also on board and is very much involved with the program, too,” added Robinson.  This is a week-long program where firefighters and fire investigators go into the classrooms to speak with the students about origins and causes of fire and to learn the basic science of fire by how it behaves and the evidence that it leaves behind.  Students will learn how to read a fire scene, build a claim for the fire’s location of origin and cause, and defend their claim to a fire investigator. This past Tuesday, Cherokee County middle school STEM teachers who work with the Xplorlabs program traveled to the Cherokee County Fire Training Center to learn more about firefighting careers.  Teachers spent the majority of the morning learning what firefighting is all about by going through different scenarios including a mock burn in a miniature house, watching fire recruits as they learn about vehicle extrications, putting on firefighter protective clothing, going up in one of the department’s aerial ladder trucks and walk through a fake smoke environment to see how firefighters operate in their turnout gear. Sean Gray, who is a representative from Underwriters Laboratories and a firefighter with Cobb County Fire & Emergency Services, came up to assist in answering questions about the program, too.  Cherokee County Fire & Emergency Services is excited to a part of this educational program to teach students about firefighting careers.

This press release was produced by the Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services. The views expressed here are the author’s own.