As a trailer in the back parking lot of Cooper City Elementary School filled with smoke on Thursday afternoon, a fire alarm sounded. A group of kids from the school's after-care program immediately fell to the floor inside.
They quickly surveyed the situation, avoiding the thick smoke and crouching carefully so as not to inhale too much. Then, they got on their bellies, military-style, and started crawling.
''Go, go, go!'' they shouted, fanning into a scraggly line that snaked toward the far door of the trailer.
But there was no actual fire, and the kids were never in danger. Rotating through the trailer in small groups, more than 200 children took part in a home-fire simulation run by the Broward Sheriff's Office Department of Fire-Rescue.
The program taught the kids not only how to detect a fire and exit their homes safely during a blaze, but also gave them a few tips on bike safety.
During the simulation, the first boy to reach the trailer door threw his arm out to grab the handle, but a classmate -- following the director's earlier instructions -- quickly stopped him.
''Feel it first!'' the classmate said.
The boy extended his palm and cautiously fingered the handle.
''Its OK,'' he said.
Then, the door flew open, and the kids crawled into another room in the trailer.
One by one, they crawled out through a window, stood up on a ladder attached to a back wall of the trailer, and jumped three feet to the ground.
In addition to crawling through the fire safety house on Thursday, the kids learned to correctly wear bicycle helmets, and raced to see who could most quickly don a full firefighter uniform.
Sammy Culver, 10, said he enjoyed the fire safety house exercise the most.
''I thought it would be really weird having all the smoke in our faces,'' he said. ''But crawling and getting down with all of my friends was kind of fun.''
Anita Albright, the after-care coordinator who organized the program, said she's glad the kids had a hands-on introduction to fire safety.
''A kid can learn one thing here and it can help save their life or somebody else's,'' she said.
Courtney Palmer, the life safety educator who gave the fire-safety lecture, said the most important part of the program was teaching kids to create and practice a fire-escape plan with their families.
''If one kid goes home and tells his parents to change the battery on the fire detector or make a plan, we've done our job,'' she said.
Distributed by the Associated Press
