Stop, drop and learn: students visit Lewes firefighters

“We want to cover our face, drop all the way down to the ground and roll around a lot until we put the fire out.”

Lewes Fire Chief Robbie Stephens gave that lifesaving lesson in stop, drop and roll to kindergarteners from Lewes Elementary School Oct. 7, the start of Fire Prevention Week.

The students spent the morning seeing firsthand what firefighters do. They learned about the gear on the trucks and ambulances, and got to use fire hoses to put out a make-believe fire.

Firefighter Liam Stabner put on his full fire gear – coat, helmet and mask – and had the students touch and talk to him. The lesson was that, even though they might look scary to young children, firefighters are their friends.

“I’m going to have Liam take off his mask now so that you can see it’s still the same firefighter it was before,” Stephens told the kids.

The students then got to go outside and use fire hoses to put out a make-believe fire. The field trip ended when the kids got to ride in a fire truck back to school.

Stephens said the focus of this year’s Fire Prevention Week is lithium-ion battery fires, which are becoming more common in Delaware. He said the Lewes Fire Department just got blankets for electric car fires.

“If we do have a car fire, like a Tesla, we can cover the car so it’s not getting out,” Stephens said. “We found that it takes over 10,000 gallons of water to actually put out an electric car fire.”

Stephens, who is also a full-time Wilmington firefighter, said there was recently a devastating fire caused by an electric scooter.

His advice is to unplug anything that uses lithium-ion batteries – from cars to rechargeable toothbrushes – before going to bed or leaving the house.