Today, the kids and I went to the MS State Fire Academy with our home school group. Apparently, little ole' Mississippi has one of the premier fire academies in the country. People come from all over the US, from US territories and even from other countries to train here at our fire academy. Pretty amazing for a little state like us.Fire is fascinating and it is fun to watch when you know that what you are seeing is being done for training purposes. We were able to see some members the Memphis Fire Department taking a refresher course in airport fire protection. The gentleman conducting the tour, who is an instructor at the academy, told us that firefighters who work within a certain proximity to any airport have to take one of these courses each year to maintain their certification. This means that we got to see the firemen set fire to an airplane and put out said fire 3 times. I am guessing that we were about 100 yards from the fire, but we could feel enough of the radiant heat within seconds to force my children to step back. I figure that it is a good object lesson for the kids ... I don't mind them enjoying seeing the men put the fire out, but I don't want them to want to get close to it.
Here are a few of the pictures I took of the day:
There is a plane under there somewhere
You get a little bit of perspective on how big this fire is when you look at the size of the firefighters in the picture.
The kids' reaction to the fire
As close as I could get to capturing all three kids cooperating for a picture.
JW with Sparky the fire dog ... last time we went he didn't want to get anywhere near Sparky, today, he asked me to take his picture with him.
All in all, it was a good day ... the weather was perfect, the kids behaved well and maybe even learned something, not bad for a Tuesday morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment