WESTFIELD- The Council on Aging and the Westfield Fire Department are both receiving SAFE grants this year to help fund the residential lockbox program and to provide fire education to Westfield Public School students.
The Student Awareness of Fire Education (SAFE) grants were announced during the City Council Finance Committee meeting last week. The grants are for $2,880 for the Senior SAFE program and $6,380 for the Student SAFE program.
A Westfield Firefighter visits with students in a classroom in the past. The Department plans to use a SAFE grant to bring firefighters back into classrooms again. (THE WESTFIELD NEWS PHOTO)
Council on Aging Director Tina Gorman said that she wants to use the $2,880 for the senior lockbox program and the Sand For Seniors program. The lockbox program installs lockboxes on a doorway at a senior’s house. In the event of a fire or medical emergency, the lockbox provides an alternate means for firefighters to enter the home without causing damage.
Gorman said that there had been a lot of demand for the lockboxes when they did the program two years ago.
She also said she wanted to use some of the funds for the Sand for Seniors program, which provides seniors with buckets of sand that they can use to de-ice their driveways in the winter if they are physically or financially unable to do so on their own.
Fire Chief Patrick Egloff said that he plans to use the $6,380 grant for the Student SAFE program. The fire department has received a similar grant in some form for the last 25 years.
“Eighty percent of the grant goes into overtime costs to get firefighters into classrooms,” said Egloff.
He added that the firefighters go into kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms to get the students interested in later becoming firefighters themselves.
“I have firefighters who went through the SAFE programs as elementary schoolers and got them involved in wanting to be a firefighter,” said Egloff.
The remaining 20 percent of the grant funds will be used to provide materials such as plastic fire hats, coloring books, pencils, and other educational, firefighter-related materials to the students.
Egloff said that this year’s grant is the highest amount they have received in a while, likely because not many departments put in for it this year due to COVID-19. He said it looks like they will be able to get firefighters into the schools this year. That vast majority of Westfield firefighters are fully vaccinated, meaning that such an event at school would likely not contribute to COVID-19 spread.
Should it not happen during the current school year, Egloff said they plan to do it in September.
