BRIDGEVIEW FIRE DEPARTMENT FIRE PREVENTION    Fire prevention or fire safety. What is it and how does the Fire Department establish this type of safety in homes, schools and the work place? The concept is very easy to say, " prevent fires before they begin". There are many different ways to accomplish this task. Firefighters know that they are not going to eliminate all fires but the idea is to eliminate the small fires from starting and / or becoming major losses to life and property. One of the basic fire science lessons a firefighter learns is that it takes three things in the right situation to create a fire. Those three things are fuel, heat and oxygen, refereed to as the fire triangle. If you eliminate these three things from coming together no fires will start. Keeping that in mind, it takes three thing in fire prevention to keep fires from starting. They are engineering, education, enforcement. Today's firefighters are very pro-active in all three areas, here is a brief description of each: Engineering: Making sure that the fire safety codes are used by architects, engineers, and builders for all new buildings and buildings that are remodeled

Education: Making sure that people are becoming aware through programs about fire safety in schools and public displays. The idea is to teach them safe habits when dealing with fire or any fire related appliance.

Enforcement: Making sure that the codes, lessons learned and and the required fire protection construction, systems and / or devices are maintained in good operating condition so they will minimize or extinguish the small fire before it gets out of control. Fire and safety codes are laws which need to be obeyed.

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