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The Handprints On The Wall

Once the blaze of a 12-unit apartment complex in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was knocked down, fire investigators made several startling discoveries. One was the charred body of an unidentified man located on the second floor landing of the building.
 
The other was a series of small sooty handprints along a stairwells wall. It was then firefighters knew some children had done exactly what they had been taught in the departments Fire Safety House. The children had kept their hands in contact with the wall while exiting the burning building. All the residents of the apartment complex escaped unharmed.
 
On October 1, 2003, the three-alarm fire at the 12-unit complex in Bethlehem displaced 49 people, including 15 children. Several days later, the victim of the fire was identified as Joginder Singh, who had doused himself with 33 cents worth of gasoline and set himself ablaze. Nine days previously, a judge had ordered him to stay away from his wife and children who resided in the apartment complex.
 
Lt. Tony Facchiano of the Bethlehem Fire Dept. personally saw the handprints of at least one child on the wall. The child that left the handprints had gone down the stairs on all fours keeping their hand in contact with the wall, he wrote to Fire Commissioner Kevin Moyzan. If anyone had any questions as to whether the time we spend running this [fire safety] program does any good, this incident would most certainly prove that it does. All the hours spent running this program is definitely not in vain.
 
Capt. Guy Elliott, also of the Bethlehem Fire Dept., said when Facchiano told him about the handprints, he wasnt surprised. We cover 22 schools altogether with our fire safety lessons, said Elliott. We got our fire safety house in May 2001 and we run our program all year long. We had 2,592 children and 347 adults go through the house in 2002. The children like to go through it again and again.
 
The Bethlehem Fire Dept. received their fire safety house through the Burn Prevention Foundation, headquartered in Allentown, PA. Incorporated in 1986, the nonprofit foundations mission is to provide burn injury prevention to and advocacy for those at greatest risk. One of its services, the Kids Fire Safety House Program, provides valuable fire safety education to children ages 5 through 9 throughout eastern PA.
 
The foundation has purchased five SCOTTY Fire Safety Houses for use in this program. Our initial purchase of a fire safety house was through the Aluminum Cans for Burned Children Foundation, said Dan Dillard, executive director of the Burn Prevention Foundation. We collected over one million aluminum cans to obtain our first fire safety house.
 
Since then, weve conducted a number of capital campaigns and joined with corporate sponsors to help with the purchases. Their fire safety program is delivered to children and other at-risk populations through the efforts of volunteer and certified firefighters who attend the foundations in-house fire safety training program.
 
We require a minimum of five instructors to run each fire safety education program in our fire safety houses, said Dillard. At least three of the instructors must be certified through the foundations program. Education is what makes the program successful. Not just anyone can walk into a fire safety house and use it effectively.
 
For 15 years, the Bethlehem Fire Department has taught children to crawl low and place their hands on walls to safely exit a burning building. That simple life-saving lesson proved successful for the 15 children who lived in the apartment complex and has proven once again that fire prevention education saves lives.

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