Firefighters from Eastern and Western Salisbury fire departments were in Salisbury Township schools recently impressing their annual Fire Prevention Week safety message on the community’s young citizens.

In some cases the message is being delivered to the second and third generation of Salisbury youngsters as firefighters take off from work, or other everyday affairs, to make sure elementary school students in the school district hear the basics of home fire safety.

Western Salisbury Volunteer Fire Department Fire Chief Joshua Wells emphasizes the importance of smoke detectors in every bedroom, never playing with matches or lighters, home fire drills and always looking at firefighters as friends coming to help rather than being afraid of a rescuer in full protective gear that might be scary if they show up to help in a middle-of-the night emergency.

In the eastern portion of the township, firefighter Robert Curcio at Harry S Truman Elementary School, carried the same message to youngsters in that school. Both program presenters emphasized the national fire prevention program theme of finding “two ways out” when holding a home fire drill. Both emphasized the importance of “getting out and staying out” and never running back into a burning building to retrieve something.

National Fire Prevention Week, always held in the week in which Oct. 9 falls, marks the time when firefighters all over the country go into schools to teach youngsters about fire safety.

Fire Prevention Weeks marks the date of the great Chicago fire of 1871 that killed more than 300 people and destroyed much of the City of Chicago.