Photo Caption - Station Commander Mark Fell with Conor Dumphy and Jennifer Goodacre from St Josephs College, Ravenhill Road at the launch of the new ‘Firestorm’ interactive package for secondary school students.   

As part of its Key Stage 3 fire safety educational programme ‘Firestorm’,

Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) has today launched a new interactive, digital package for post-primary school students to test and improve their knowledge on fire safety issues. 

 

The interactive launch took place during Fire Safety Week 2011 at Central Fire Station in Belfast.

 

Pupils from Ashfield Boys High School, East Belfast, St Joseph’s College, Ravenhill Road and Newtownbreada High School, Newtownbreda were among the first students in Northern Ireland to try out the exciting new interactive programme and Facebook game, ‘District Command’, enabling them, in the online world, to command and control their ‘District’ and make life saving choices to protect the community from the dangers of fire. 

 

 

Peter Craig, Chief Fire Officer, Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service said:

 

“Our research has shown that Key Stage 3 pupils react extremely well to online interactive educational campaigns.  This is one of the reasons why we have developed our ‘Firestorm’ fire safety education campaign into an online interactive package as another way of communicating our life saving fire safety messages to young people.   

 

“The new package also enables us to roll this educational campaign out into every secondary and grammar school across Northern Ireland by providing them with a link to the webpage or a disc for the interactive packages. 

 

“We are one of the first Fire & Rescue Services in the UK to use this type of educational tool and we will also be using it to complement our Facebook page. 

 

“The ‘Firestorm’ package covers key educational themes such as hoax calls, deliberate fire setting in the countryside and home fire safety advice  and through this interactive package we have revitalised these key themes and brought them into the 21st century to engage with today’s ‘online generation’.

 

“’How to Save a Life” is the theme of this year’s Fire Safety Week and throughout this week we are targeting vulnerable groups and outlining for them how the choices they make have the ability to protect themselves, their families and their community from the dangers of fire.  This theme is carried throughout the ‘Firestorm’ interactive package and while working through the programme, students will see very clearly how the choices they make about fire safety can become the difference between life and death.”

 

More information on ‘How to Safe a Life’ can be found on the NIFRS website www.nifrs.org or on our Facebook page.