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News Media Fire Safety Class is 10 Years Old
Ten years ago, the CAL FIRE San Bernardino Unit rolled out a specially created program to provide fire safety training to the news media. The program evolved from the practice of having news media days at fire facilities where a few news media people would receive training to the current program. The current program was designed to take real training to the news media in order to actually provide safety training to the maximum number of news personnel possible.
The first location that the class was provided was at Los Angeles television station KTLA, channel 5. From that time, the class has been taught at least once at nearly every television station, news radio station and news paper in the Los Angeles news market. To date more than 1,000 members of the news media, reporters, videographers, news editors, producers and news management have participated in the training.
This year, the CAL FIRE San Bernardino Unit has provided first time and refresher training to Fox News Channel, NBC4 and ABC7. In these training classes, more than 300 news professionals have received the training. The training at ABC7 was conducted this week and more than 150 members of the news staff participated in the three days of fire safety training.
This training is not only important from a safety standpoint which is paramount, but is also provides education that allows the reporters to provide better and more accurate information in their news reports regarding fires and what they can do.
Los Angeles television station NBC4 held a health and safety fair for their employees on Tuesday, August 10, 2010. CAL FIRE San Bernardino was invited to participate in the event. CAL FIRE San Bernardino has a long running relationship with NBC4, having taught the News Media Fire Safety class there for the last five years.
The event ran from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and provided information for personal health, safety, and financial (retirement & investment) health and safety. There were also physical practitioners there providing spinal alignment checks, acupuncture relaxation, and hypnosis relaxation techniques.
CAL FIRE was the only public safety agency to attend the event. CAL FIRE had a little something for everyone, information for protecting and clearing your property, evacuation tips for home and pets, and Smokey Bear comics and coloring books for children at home. One person commented that they had been evacuated during the Station fire and took the sheet on evacuation tips saying that now they could be prepared if it ever happens again. One of the best things that happened was that CAL FIRE was the only one providing bags to carry all the things that were being given away. So at least for Tuesday, CAL FIRE bags could be seen all over the NBC4 lot.
The event was well attended by news personnel (NBC4 weatherman Fritz Coleman in photo) from NBC4 and Telemundo, their Spanish language affiliate along with other employees from the Burbank television operation there.
