The Bloomfield Fire Department held its second annual Girls on Fire day camp for fourth- and fifth-grade girls on the mornings of Aug. 14 and 15 at its East Passaic Avenue fire station.
With all the mental focus, exercise and teamwork involved, acquanting energetic 9- and 10-year-old girls with a firefighter’s job on a summer’s day was a stroke of genius.
Second-year firefighter Claudia Astudillo, who came up with the idea, was just one of the Bloomfield firefighters at the station instructing the girls, running the kids through their paces.
They were assisted by Montclair and Harrison female firefighters. And if anyone wanted to know how to make serious business fun to learn for kids, a word of advice: stopwatch. In a no-stress environment, timing kids with a task to perform is entertainment to them.
Twenty-two girls attended the camp and with close supervision did, in a scaled-down, safety-first, simulated version, some of what an academy recruit does. There was no climbing.
In the morning, they did jumping jacks, push-ups and squats. Then there was observing the opening and closing of a practice hydrant, stretching out the hose and connecting it to the hydrant.
The girls removed and attached hydrant fixtures, carried tools and crawled through confined spaces wearing a blindfold.
They observed a display of what is done when a person is trapped in a car and has to be extracted and there was the extension of a 110-foot ladder to watch and a short video on first aid.
“The idea was to show girls the fire service which they don’t see a lot,” Astudillo said.
When asked, the girls said the camp was fun and inspiring and they enjoyed getting to meet firefighters.
Some of the children either had a father who was a firefighter or they were friends with people who knew firefighters.
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