Residents plus local students invited to put on their creative hats

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

Seguin FD to host Fire Prevention Week window decorating, sidewalk chalk contests

(Seguin) — The Seguin Fire/EMS Department has decided to give individuals, families and businesses a few more days in which to fire up their ideas for its first ever window decorating contest. In preparing for its annual Fire Prevention Week, Oct.9-15, the fire department has launched this creative opportunity to promote fire prevention and safety.

Seguin Fire Marshal Greg Dreiss says the fire department decided to extend the original September 30th contest deadline to Oct.15.

He says the hope is for storefronts and even homes to decorate in accordance with this year’s theme, “Fire Won’t Wait. Plan Your Escape” or any other fire prevention related idea.

“We are asking our businesses to help us spread the word of fire prevention and we want them to display it in their window. We hope that by putting it in multiple places, that we will get more attention towards the essence of fire prevention. We want to make sure that all of our children and our adults are safe in their homes. By doing these campaigns, they get to see it in different formats and everybody’s artistic ability is able to be expressed,” said Dreiss.

Once the window is completed, then participants are asked to simply take a photo of the artwork, upload it to their business Facebook page and then tag @SeguinFireDepartment.

“Once we get the entries at the end of it, we are going to put them on our Facebook page and allow our public to vote on what they thought was the best one. So, it’s no longer just the opinion of a fire fighter or fire marshal, it’s the opinion of our general public of what they like the best and we feel like it also gives us a little bit more push out there for fire safety,” said Dreiss. 

Dreiss says another key component to this year’s Fire Prevention Week campaign is the participation by local students and families. He says starting today, families are encouraged to check their child’s backpacks for contest information.

“Starting on Monday, we are going to be in schools passing out our Fire Prevention material and we are going to be announcing our Sidewalk Chalk Art contest as well. We are breaking those as well into smaller groups of the age groups. There will be K-3 and then 4th-6th and then the junior high and high schoolers will be in that last group all together,” said Dreiss.

He says during this year’s campaign, the Seguin Fire Department will be working within the schools to make sure all families are safe.

“There’s also a fire escape plan that hopefully will be pushed by the schools as homework so that they can send back to their teachers to show they have a fire escape plan for their homes. We are hoping that by doing that, there’s approximately 2,000 children that we are focusing that on including our private and charter schools and we are hoping by doing that, that we increase their knowledge on how to get out of their homes safely during that time,” said Dreiss.

This year’s observance of Fire Prevention Week will wrap up on Saturday, Oct. 15 with the annual open house event at the Central Fire Station located at 110 Elm St. Tours of the newly renovated fire house, kids games, hot dogs, snow cones and popcorn will be available.

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