Fire! Fire! Fire!

           This was what we heard after our snack time. Some of us were reading books in the library, some were washing hands, and some were packing away. We were caught off guard as a fire alarm sounded off and we heard “Kaji desu. Kaji desu.” (In English, it means “There’s a fire.”)

“Wait… there’s a fire?” H asked, puzzled.

“Fire! Fire!” our teachers repeated. “Petals, line up, please!” and we lined up, preparing to go outside. But…. Some of us sat down by the shoe shelves to change shoes; some have already taken off their shoes. Our teachers shook their heads, telling us firmly and calmly, “There’s a fire, we should go. Now.”  In the end, we had friends who went down the stairs with just their socks on. Uh– oh.

“Okay, Petals,” Pauline began. “We have something important to talk about. But first, let’s read this book,” she told us. It was “I Want to be a Firefighter” by Firefly Books. There were lots of colorful pictures inside– it showed firefighters wearing their protective yellow coats, the fire engine with the sirens and lots of controls, and firefighters holding the big hose and putting out scary– looking fires. We also saw pictures of fire boats putting out fires from the ships, and a helicopter that dumps water on big forest fires. At the end of the book, there was a picture of a firefighter who looked tired from all the firefighting, yet happy at the same time, because he has helped a lot of people.

“Now…. Who wants to be a firefighter?” Pauline asked us. A couple of us raised our hands, and the teachers asked them why.

“Because… help,” K replied.

“I wanna help when there is an earthquake,” Z said.

“Because one day when the fire comes, the fireman was nice to me. Then he put the firefighter’s hat on me. Then we ride the fire engine– it was super fast!” S narrated.

“Because I wanna help,” Z said.

“I can do some stuff quickly, then we can help people, and then I can use the fire hose to put out the fire,” H said.

Since were talking about fires and firefighters, we talked about what happened a while ago, and what the teachers were saying a while ago.

“Fire! Fire!” K said. Our teachers then explained that what happened a while ago was called a fire drill. It’s like a practice for us to be ready whenever a fire happens. They also explained that we need to leave everything behind– our backpacks, water bottles, our toys– EVERYTHING. If our things got burned, that’s alright. We can always buy a new one. But as for us…. There’s only one of us. If we’re gone, then our mommies and daddies won’t be able to go to the store to buy another version of us. So we have to do our best to protect ourselves!

One way to protect ourselves when there’s a fire is to cover our nose and mouth so the smoke won’t go inside our body. If the smoke goes inside our body, it can make us very sick. Another way is to move quickly– if we’re slow, then we might not have a chance to get away from the fire. Next is, leaving all our things behind and making sure that we have our shoes on when we leave the school– unlike what happened when we had our fire drill. That was one of our biggest lessons for today.

“Then we cannot use the elevator when there’s an emergency,” S said. “We can only use the stairs,” he told us. Yes, he made a perfectly good point! It’s dangerous to use the elevator in times of emergency. They may stop, and people might get stuck in there for a long time.

Aside form having a good chat about emergencies (Pauline said next time, we will talk about earthquakes), we also had another fun gym class session with Tsurumi sensei. We did some stretches for our warm– ups. Then we practiced jumping and landing on the floor with our feet apart (gu– pa, gu– pa), and our bear walk. For our game, we played sumo with him using the green mat– it was so funny!

That’s all for our Monday– how about you, how was your day?

Love,

All the emergency– ready little bunnies in Petals Class