From left: Firefigher Oona Aldrich with contest winners Jack Stahl, Cecilia Juliano, Kirsten Bergen, Ethan Taylor, Ellie Reiter, Colin Murphy, and first-grade teacher Lisa Hopkins. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Lisa Hopkins’ first-grade class poses with the firefighters.

For the past 16 years, the members of the Harvard Fire Department have been educating local children about how to protect themselves against fire. They accomplish this through a Massachusetts Department of Fire Safety program known as S.A.F.E (Student Awareness of Fire Education). It was designed to put firefighter educators into classrooms, thus creating a partnership with teachers and students.

The Harvard Fire Department has taken the program one step further by engaging Hildreth Elementary students in an annual contest to create materials related to fire education. The contest is held in conjunction with fire safety month in October.

The theme for this year was "Ways to Keep my Family Safe." The winners, who are randomly chosen, are picked up at their homes in a fire truck and transported to the fire house where they are served a pancake breakfast. After breakfast, they return to the fire truck to be driven to school.

One of this year's winners was 6-year-old Mettacomett Path resident Cecilia Juilano.

Cecilia, a first-grader in Mrs. Carroll's class, created a book which she titled "When a House is on Fire."

The book is colorfully illustrated with pictures of a family and their dog. It describes how they escape the fire by following the escape plan they developed together.

When asked how she came up with the idea for the book she said, "I just thought it would be fun. My idea was to make a creative book about what happens if a house is on fire. You follow the steps to get out."

The young author goes on to describe how important it is for people to have an escape plan: "If your house is on fire you would know what to do. Because if not, you wouldn't do anything and you'd burn up."

Cecilia's mother was impressed that her daughter learned so much about fire safety.

"She came home from school with the contest form and told me she wanted to enter," Angela Juliano said. "She worked so hard putting it together and came up with the idea on her own. I was so happy that her hard work paid off."

Cecilia's 3 year-old sister Joana, a Village Nursery preschooler, was also impressed when the fire truck drove up: "I thought she was going to drive!"

The cover of Cecilia Juliano’s book on fire safety.	Cecilia takes the wheel of a parked fire truck.