Will Squire gets a helping hand from firefighter Oona Aldrich. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Firefighter Tony Shaw holds baby Emma Squire so her parents can eat their pancakes.

Third-grade teacher Arlene Sullivan accepts a trophy for the class with the most entries from Oona Aldrich.

Oona Aldrich takes breakfast orders from the winners of the 2007 Fire and Life Safety contest. Left to right are Sam Rosenfield, Will Squire, Chris West, Kate Toll, Arielle Sclar, and Alexandra O’Neil.

“For a 5½-year-old boy, that’s about as good as it gets,” said Kate Squire of Oak Hill Road about her son Will’s recent adventure with the fire department.

Will was one of six elementary school children, one each from kindergarten through fifth grade, to have their names drawn as winners in the Student Awareness of Fire Education (S.A.F.E) contest. The prize was to be picked up at their homes in the morning by a fire truck, complete with lights flashing, have breakfast at the station with the firefighters, and then be driven to school in the fire engine. This happened the morning of Oct. 29, culminating a month of fire safety activities conducted by the Harvard Fire Department at the elementary school.

Between 7 and 8 a.m. on the morning of the 29th, two fire trucks, each with another firefighter accompanying the driver and room for four passengers, picked up the six contest winners around town. At the fire station, retired Chief Peter Warren cooked breakfast. This year the department involved families even more than in previous years by inviting them to join the children at breakfast and to take pictures.

The Fire and Life Safety contest is in its ninth year. As part of the program, Harvard firefighter and S.A.F.E. coordinator Oona Aldrich and another firefighter from the department visit each elementary school classroom in October and discuss safety with the children. While fire prevention in the home is the main curriculum, they also address campfire and bike safety, among other topics. Aldrich said she encourages the students to share what they learned with their families and to enter the contest.

The task for contest entrants in kindergarten through fourth grade is to make a home-escape-plan poster, showing the doors and windows of their houses, location of smoke detectors, two possible exits, and a safe meeting place. Families are encouraged to participate in the project and to practice their home-escape plan. Aldrich commented that this year’s posters were the best the department has ever seen. In the past, many posters were missing one of the requirements; this year only a very few were missing anything. At the fifth-grade level, contest entrants each write an essay on how to create a S.A.F.E. candle and how to make candle use safer in general.

Aldrich said that Harvard’s fire department, which was established in 1921, has always been great on education and that the firefighters teach safety all year long. For the fourth year, the department awarded a traveling class trophy to the class with the most contest entries. Aldrich described the trophy as “huge,” with 48 plaques on the sides and a fire engine on top. This year Mrs. Sullivan and her third-graders will have one of the plaques engraved in their honor; the trophy will remain in that classroom for the rest of the year.

And the Winners Are . . .

Asked about the experience, contest winner Will Squire extended both arms over his head, and said that he liked riding in the fire truck and being “up so high.” The first-grade winner was Alexandra O’Neil. Second-grader Arielle Sclar said she really liked the ride and the breakfast. Her mom added that Arielle worked hard on the poster and that the entire family enjoyed the project and found it a very nice experience. In third grade, Sam Rosenfield said his favorite part of the event was eating breakfast at the station and honking the horn on the way into the school parking lot. Fourth-grader Kate Toll said she rode in engine #1, and once at the station she had a nice tour of each truck.

“We climbed all over each one,” she said.

Kate gave an impressive list of things she learned: a truck holds 500 gallons of water; a tanker (she thinks) carries 3,000 gallons, enough to fill a large swimming pool, and can be emptied in 30 seconds; a firefighter carries a 50-pound air tank in a backpack and has to practice with it. At the fifth-grade level, Chris West was chosen to represent his class in the candle safety essay contest.

Ever the educator and conscious of fire safety, Aldrich reminded everyone that changing the clocks is a perfect time to also change the batteries in home smoke detectors.

“In any home escape plan, the key is working smoke alarms,” she said.