The annual Chief For a Day returned to Lloydminster for the second time and had eight students from grades four to six getting to be both police and fire chiefs. The day also acts as a kick-off to emergency preparedness week, which starts on Monday.
To be selected for the day, students had to submit a piece of work describing how their family is prepared in case of emergencies.
“All of the students that did submit put a lot of work in and it was a hard choice picking eight of them,” said Fire Chief Jordan Newton.
“There was a lot of funny items that people put into their emergency preparedness kits, one of the things was how to keep occupied annoying little brothers and sisters,” Newton adds.
Inspector Neill Pearson, echoed Newtons statements, unable to pick a favourite.
“It’s kind of hard to pick one, they’re all really good, the ones that came through, really creative. I can see how with kids now it has to do with multimedia and the phones, which is really neat, some of the quality was really good.”
One of the students Iram Ali, who is in grade five, prepared a letter describing what was in her emergency kit. She didn’t expect to get picked, but she said she was really happy when she was. One thing she learned, that there is backwards seats in fire trucks.
Students were able to participate in a few activities including finger printing, forensics, practicing with fire hose, a relay bucket challenge and a rescue dummy relay. They also got to see a few demonstration including a photo radar demo and a police dog demo.
The goal for today was to get the youth involved in emergency preparedness according to Anne Danielson, Emergency Management Coordinator.
“When we talk about emergency preparedness, it’s important to get youth involved because it inspires that attitude of preparedness going forward in life. If you can get families engaged that’s really the way to go about emergency preparedness. It’s everyone’s responsibility to be prepared in case of an emergency.”
Danielson adds they plan to do it again.
“It’s a really fun event for the public safety team with the city, as well as getting the students in to get that experience.”