Henderson Fire Department uses open house events to push safety

The Henderson Fire Department held an open house July 14 at Station 86, where parents and children got safety advice from firefighters.

“We don’t want the first time (kids) meet our firefighters to be when that disaster happens,” said Henderson public information officer Kathleen Richards. “We figured if they see a firefighter at this kind of event, they’ll remember and be a little less afraid if something does happen and they have someone coming in to save them.”

Fire Department partners, such as Get Ready Stay Ready and Check Your Seats in the Heat, set up booths to offer safety tips to families exploring the station. Kids could have their photos take in firefighter uniforms and in the station’s pumper engine truck while firefighters milled around and answered questions.

Fire Station 86, 1996 E. Galleria Drive, is one of nine stations at which the Fire Department holds monthly open houses January through September. Station 86 serves an area of Henderson covering about 9.8 square miles and more than 6,478 residents as of 2016, making it one of the slower stations.

Visitors toured the station’s kitchen, rest area, workout facility and garage bay, which houses a paramedic engine with a 100-foot ladder, equipped for both firefighting rescue and emergency medical services, and the department’s only fire rescue boat.

Four fire personnel, consisting of a captain, engineer, firefighter/paramedic and firefighter, live at the station while working 48-hour shifts.

Station 86 firefighter Eric Mathews has been with the department for 18 years.

“It makes me smile just to see that all these kids like what we do and want to do what we’re doing,” Mathews said. “It’s a huge compliment just to see them going up and down the engine stairs in their fire rescue shirts.”

Seventy-six percent of calls the Fire Department receives are medical, a “historic” number in recent years, Richards said. The department is anticipating around 32,000 calls in 2018, a 30 percent increase over the past five years.

“You’d think the Fire Department would deal primarily with fires, but fires are only actually about 2 percent of our calls,” Richards said.

Many of the children at Station 86’s open house were girls, which Richards said is encouraging, as the department would like to attract more female firefighters. The city receives fewer applications from women because of the perception of the job’s physical demands, Richards said. The department has seven female firefighters.

Las Vegas resident Brittany Butler brought her two children, Kai, 3, and Emery, 2, to the station as a surprise. They spent most of their time climbing onto the fire engine and posing for photos.

“As soon as I told them we were coming here, the rest of the day, they kept saying ‘fire station, fire station,’” Butler said. “They would both be firefighters if they could.”

Contact Alex Meyer at ameyer@viewnews.com or 702-383-0496. Follow @alxmey on Twitter.