Successful Local Public Ed Programs Made Available Nationwide by PEAP
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Fire Prevention in Action
The creators of Diesel Dan, a fire education program for fifth grade students, had little idea in 1977 that within three years fire departments in 32 states would adopt the program for their communities.
Former Deputy Chief George Melling, Public Fire Education Specialist Kent Harris, cartoonist Don Shipps and other interested members of the Lee’s Summit, Mo., Fire Department designed the Diesel Dan program to meet their local fire education need. Other communities throughout the United States had the same need and found out about the soon-to-be-popular Diesel Dan with the help of the Public Education Assistance Program (PEAP) administered through the Office of Planning and Education, United States Fire Administration.
This concept of identifying and sharing resources was the original basis for PEAP, creating a partnership of federal, state and local efforts. PEAP has matured into a federal grants-tostates program with 17 past and current participating states. Through PEAP, states coordinate their public fire education resource exchange systems and programs. States provide local fire organizations with access to packaged programs. States also offer technical assistance in planning, implementing and evaluating local public education programs.
Network of educators
The key to the success of PEAP is the national network of public fire educators that has grown from a handful in 1975 to several hundred in 1980. This network of educators, many of whom have worked to establish PEAP in their own states, provides valuable technical assistance to states just beginning PEAP and to individual fire educators developing their own programs.
USFA public fire education programs are based on the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974, which states that “fire prevention and control is and should remain a state and local responsibility” and directs the federal government to establish a “coordinated program to support and reinforce” these state and local activities.
In studying local public fire education activities, USFA concluded that effective local public fire education programs required three kinds of assistance— coordination of resources, packaged programs targeted to specific fire problems, and technical assistance. USFA also determined that existing state fire agencies could—and in selected cases did—provide these services to help local communities meet their responsibilities in public fire education. With encouragement and resources, these state agencies can contribute substantially to local public fire education programs.
PEAP evolved from the capability and willingness of state fire agencies to provide communities with the three services which local communities need to deliver public fire education programs.
Three components of program
“The purpose of PEAP is to develop or improve the states’ capability to provide communities with leadership, information and materials, and technical assistance in planning, implementing, and evaluating public fire education programs that will reduce state and local fire losses,” according to the USFA “Public Education Assistance Program Guidelines.” The objectives of PEAP’s three state program components support this overall purpose:
- To make the public education program an integral part of the state fire structure (administration);
- To provide local fire educators with fire education program information and materials (resource system); and
- To build local capacity to plan, implement, and evaluate effective public education programs (technical assistance).
To help states accomplish these objectives, USFA provides $35,000 in PEAP grants to each participating state over a period of three years. Program materials and technical assistance from OPE staff or experts from the field are also available. The financial and technical assistance offered through PEAP is intended to support and stimulate state efforts, rather than provide total funding.
Pilot test made
Four states were selected to pilot test the concept of a statewide resource system. After the pilot test, administration and technical assistance components were added to the resource system component to complete the integrated PEAP concept. The structure of PEAP, which also evolved from the experience of these states, resembles the stages of a rocket taking off—three phases with each phase dependent on successful completion of the previous stage.
During their first year in PEAP, states make specific plans for their statewide public education program, including specific plans for each component. During the next two years under Phase Ila and lib, the states implement and evaluate their programs. While federal funding ceases after Phase lib, technical assistance from OPE continues.
States currently participating in the PEAP program include:
Phase lib: Connecticut, Georgia,
North Carolina and Oklahoma.
Phase Ila: Alaska, Arizona, Missouri,
Montana, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Phase I: Maryland, Minnesota and Virginia.
Steering committee guidance
PEAP’s administration component, whose objective is leadership and coordination, usually involves guidance from a statewide public fire education steering committee. Committee members, who represent fire service and other interests in the state, may provide policy guidance or be working members of the state PEAP team. Mini-grants to local fire departments is another key PEAP administration activity.
State resource system efforts are directed to making fire education program materials more readily available to fire educators.
PEAP states plan their individual resource systems to meet the need for community access to program packages in a variety of ways. After conducting inventories of fire education materials in their state, California, Connecticut, Georgia, and Oregon each published a catalog of existing program packages. Resource exchange bulletins, patterned after the OPE Public Education Resource Exchange Bulletin, are published by Georgia, Illinois, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington. Both the catalogs and bulletins apply the concept of mutual aid to fire education materials. Under the resource system, fire educators agree to share their materials—often on loan or a doit-yourself copy basis—with their peers.
Resource centers established
Several states have established resource centers at one or more locations. Ten local fire departments in Illinois house materials which other fire departments borrow for their programs. In Delaware, a room at the State Fire School has been set aside for education materials. Regional libraries in Georgia serve as resource centers, while a fire fighters’ museum in Oklahoma fulfills the same function.
Materials and additional funding for the resource centers come from a variety of sources, including state purchases, donations from fire service organizations and the insurance industry, and contributions by individual fire educators in the state.
Educators acquire skills through state conferences or workshops and through courses. With partial funding from their PEAP grant, states generally host yearly statewide public fire education conferences. In-state and out-of-state fire educators describe their programs. One session is often devoted to a display of program materials used by the participants. This increases participants’ awareness of available programs and resources and builds participants’ skills.
Techniques for planning public fire education programs and specialized instruction in program evaluation are included in the state conferences. Special topics, such as interviewing and counseling juvenile firesetters and their families are especially practical for the educators.
Women ask to participate
Such conferences can have unexpected impact. After a conference in Delaware, members of the ladies auxiliaries requested a role in public fire education. The Delaware State Fire School responded by instituting a fire safety instructor’s course which is now part of its PEAP program. A Connecticut PEAP conference which included a session on smoke detector programs led directly to a local smoke detector program which is credited with saving four lives.
Conference participants frequently use the materials and skills available through conferences to revise old education programs or begin new ones.
Some PEAP states offer courses leading to certification as part of their technical assistance efforts. The certified fire safety instructors who complete training offered by the Delaware State Fire School, for example, conduct the bulk of public fire education programs in that state. The PEAP grantee in California, the Office of State Fire Marshal, delivers its technical assistance in cooperation with the state’s fire service training facilities. Illinois has developed a 40-hour course in public fire education which is required for state certification as fire inspector I and II.
Photo by Lt. John Haney
The direct delivery of technical assistance by representatives of PEAP states reinforces the role of participating states as nationwide leaders in public fire education. In addition, this form of technical assistance contributes to the PEAP objective of establishing a nationwide public fire education network capable of responding to identified national fire problems with a coordinated public education program.
State commitment
The states participating in the PEAP partnership respond to the federal investment in a number of ways. State and local level public fire educators often contribute their time—for steering committee activities, conference development, and other functions—to the state PEAP program. State fire service organizations have also donated funding and materials to the program in their states.
PEAP has resulted in more long-term commitments and official recognition of public fire education by the states. For example, the 1979 Oregon Legislature approved an initial biennial public education budget of $122,953 for technical assistance, community action planning grants, an annual public fire educators school, a resource exchange system, and model public fire education programs. Endorsed by the state public fire education steering committee, the 1981 budget request for the Alaska Office of the State Fire Marshal included more than $50,000 for public fire education. The Illinois FIRES Project (the PEAP program in that state) is well on its way to becoming a self-sustaining foundation which will function without further federal or state funding.
OPE’s other fire education programs are directed to all states, whether PEAP or not. However, these programs share the objectives of PEAP state activities: providing coordination, access to program materials, and technical assistance. For example, in the area of coordination, OPE identified Title V of the Older American Act and CETA as potential sources of funding for local fire departments to hire civilians to conduct home safety surveys. In many cases, OPE has pinpointed a specific local funder for an individual fire department to obtain home safety survey personnel.
Types of OPE materials
Information and materials available from the Office of Planning and Education are integral to state resource systems developed as part of PEAP and to individual fire educators in nonPEAP states. The general categories of OPE materials are:
- 1. Packaged programs developed in the field,
- 2. New packages or materials,
- 3. Program strategies and
- 4. Program descriptions
OPE funds the packaging and field validation of existing local programs which other communities may adopt. For example, the curriculum for training civilians to conduct home safety surveys in Edmonds, Wash., was packaged under an OPE grant and has since been used by an estimated 150 communities. Many of these communities have accessed local funders of Title V and CETA programs identified by OPE. A separate grant to a grass-roots organization of families and friends of burn victims, named Action for the Prevention of Burn Injuries to Children, resulted in a burn and scald prevention program package called, Ban the Burn.
Negatives for printing
Where there is a definite need for high-quality program materials that do not exist elsewhere, the Office of Planning and Education may develop them for resource system use. These materials have been produced in brochure and media kit formats. “Wake Up! Smoke Detectors Can Save Your Life” and “Would You Keep A Bomb in Your Basement?” are four-panel brochures that are available for printing through the use of negatives. Fire departments and other organizations borrow the negatives from USFA, add their own logo, and print copies for distribution. An estimated 10 million copies of the smoke detector brochure were distributed by this method to communities throughout the nation at no cost to the federal government.
OPE has sponsored the development of media kits through fire service organizations. “Keep a Lid on Grease Fires” and a kit on woodburning stove safety (to be released this fall) are made available for fire educators to use in their own local broadcast public service announcement spots.
In addition to packaging research results and local program materials and developing needed materials, OPE summarizes the strategies which local fire educators use for target audiences. Included in the category of published program strategies are “Teaching Fire Safety Education,” “Urban Public Fire Education: From Neighborhood to City-wide Programs in Chicago,” “Young Children: A New Target for Public Fire Education,” and “Allies Against Burns.” Each of these monographs includes examples and sample techniques from existing effective public fire education programs.
Resource bulletin
The Public Education Resource Exchange Bulletin, an award-winning publication released by OPE several times yearly, provides information on public fire education programs offered by local communities. Local fire educators use the bulletin to select program materials or strategies which meet their own needs. At least six fire educators whose programs were described in the Bulletin during 1979 report receiving more than 50 requests for additional information.
At the heart of technical assistance programs to states is the OPE-developed manual, “Public Fire Education Planning: A Five Step Process.” This systematic approach to public fire education stresses identifying the fire problems of the community or state, selecting a problem to impact upon, designing a target program to reduce the problem, implementing the program, and evaluating the effectiveness of the program. This planning tool provides educators with a step-by-step process to follow.
The most concentrated program of technical assistance in public fire education to the states was the smoke detector program conducted by OPE in cooperation with the National Fire Academy during 1977-78.
Smoke detector seminars
OPE identified smoke detectors as a means of reducing the national fire problem and designed the program in a seminar format which participants could use in their communities. Supporting materials for the seminar included a series of five manuals published by OPE: “Smoke Detector Resource Catalog,” “Smoke Detector Technology,” “Moving the Public on Smoke Detectors,” “Smoke Detectors and Legislation,” and “Smoke Detector Training.”
A total of 93 seminars reaching 9367 attendees was delivered within a year. It is conservatively estimated that seminar participants and those they subsequently trained provided detector information to 1,590,292 people.
Counseling programs for juvenile firesetters are receiving wide recognition and are now found in many city fire departments largely as a result of the OPE-sponsored workshops and materials, Interviewing and Counseling Juvenile Firesetters. Between August and November 1980, workshops will be presented in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Florida, North Carolina, New York, Oregon, Arkansas and New Jersey. Recently the San Francisco Fire Department began a program similar to Big Brothers to help young firesetters whose needs are male companionship and guidance. Funding and technical assistance for the startup of the program came from OPE.
The commitments of the USFA, participating PEAP states, and local fire educators exemplify the evolving partnership in public fire education. As a result, programs such as Diesel Dan are being shared within the PEAP states and nationwide.
Note: Specific information about PEAP can be obtained from Pam Powell, public education assistance program manager.
