| The Milton Fire Department, along with all other departments in Rock
County, have access to the Survive Alive House located in Beloit. This is used to
teach fire safety primarily to children, but we've found that the adults that go through
the house enjoy it as much as the kids. It is a two story house, built specifically
for this purpose, and entirely through donations. The house is equipped with a smoke
machine which can rapidly fill the downstairs portion of the house with "smoke."
Red strobe lights simulate the flicker of flame, and real working smoke detectors
add to the realism. Special heating elements are built into the doors, so that when
the kids feel the door for heat, the doors will actually be warm to the touch. If
the door is hot, the kids can escape through a second-floor bedroom window onto a balcony,
where they can then descend a flight of stairs to the ground. The bedroom windows
are blacked-out to simulate nighttime. If the door is not hot, they can escape
through the smoke down a flight of stairs, and eventually out the front door. All of
the features of the house are controlled by a firefighter working in a control room behind
a two-way mirror. All of the firefighters assisting in the demonstration wear
two-way radio headsets in order to coordinate everything. The meeting place outside
of the house has a telephone, and the kids use this to "dial 911", which
actually connects them to the firefighter working in the control room. This
firefighter asks the kids the same questions that a 911 operator would ask, so that the
kids would know what to expect if they ever had to call 911 in a real-life situation. |
The Stateline Area Survive
Alive House
