Naperville fire fighters take residents to Safety Town

As flames licked the air a few feet away, Salima Jiwani and her 6-year-old son, Nizar, struggled to pull the pin out of the fire extinguisher.

It wouldn't budge. The fire billowed, and Nizar's eyes bulged.

Luckily, it was just a demonstration, part of the Safety Town event held Saturday by the Naperville fire and police departments. Safety Town is one of several open houses held in the area this weekend as part of Fire Prevention Month.

"You couldn't do it. So then what do you do?" Brian Michor, a Naperville firefighter/paramedic standing nearby, asked gently. "Get out of the home!"

Michor pulled the pin and the Jiwanis practiced swinging the extinguisher back and forth over the fire. Acrid smoke hung over the crowd watching the demonstration.

"I've never used a fire extinguisher," said Salima Jiwani, a Naperville resident. "I wouldn't have known what to do if this was real."

Her husband, Nizar Jiwani, had taken his try with their other son, Keyaan, 4. "It's good to try it out before you're in the situation," he said.

That exactly the purpose behind Safety Town, said Mike Rafferty, a Naperville resident and city 911 dispatcher. Children should get training before they need to use it, in a fun way that demystifies emergency personnel and equipment, he said.

In the past, Rafferty has taken 911 calls made by children who were trained at Safety Town, he said. The kids knew what to do, and it made it easier for emergency personnel, Rafferty said.

"They need to be calm and brave enough to call 911," he said. "It sounds very simple, but during an emergency, in a child's mind, it can be very scary."

Children tested their bravery throughout the day by straddling police motorcycles, climbing through ambulances, and listening to police explain firearms laid out on a table.

Kids pressed their thumbs into ink, saw their prints appear, registered their bikes, and practiced dialing 911.