U.S. Department of Homeland Security FEMA Preparedness 
Smart Practices Spotlight
April 9, 2003

FIRE Educators: Helping Schools Become Better Prepared
Hoover, Alabama Fire Department

Summary: Increasingly state and local personnel are recognizing the need to work together 
to help protect their communities. This week's Spotlight focuses on how a local fire 
department established a program that provides a way to better connect the town's fire 
department, police department and school system.   

When the Hoover, Ala., Fire Department decided it was time for a better working 
relationship with the local school system, it developed a program that involved 
designating a Fire Information Resource Educator (F.I.R.E.) for every school in the 
community.

Essentially, the fire department was seeking to expand an already successful Police 
School Resource Officer Program at the city's nine elementary schools, three middle 
schools and two high schools. To centralize and improve connections with the schools and 
to identify new ways to serve the more than 10,000 students and faculty members within 
the school system, the department recruited volunteers from within its ranks to serve as 
F.I.R.E. educators and principal points of contact for each of the schools.

Having a F.I.R.E. educator certified as a First Aid/CPR Instructor and responsible for 
safety and fire code issues at each of the schools has led to a number of useful 
initiatives, for example:

• F.I.R.E. educators serve as a critical conduit between school nurses and the paramedics 
at each fire station and they are involved in fire prevention education and coordination 
at their respective schools. 

• They have provided fire extinguisher training to the schools' nutritionists, kitchen 
workers and custodians, and helped establish the school system's crisis counseling 
response network. 

• F.I.R.E. educators have provided system-wide training to school administrators in areas 
such as disaster response and local school mitigation, emergency plan development and 
implementation, and the Incident Management System (IMS). In fact, this relationship has 
led to the official adoption of IMS as the school system's crisis management model. 

A mobile command unit for the city was a significant result of the partnership between 
the Hoover Fire Department and the school.  A surplus vehicle from the Hoover City 
Schools and the remodeling efforts of Hoover firefighters and fleet management personnel 
exemplified this partnership.

Other benefits of this relationship include enhanced communications among all the 
participants, improved integration of city and school system emergency response plans, 
and a reduction in the number of safety violations identified during fire inspections of 
the school campuses.
To submit a 'Smart Practice' for consideration or subscribe to Smart Practices Spotlight 
send an e-mail to SmartPractices@fema.gov
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Smart Practices Spotlight highlights practices and ideas that members of the emergency 
management and responder community have found useful and effective; they are not 
necessarily advocated or endorsed by FEMA.  For more information about this initiative, 
contact Capt.. Allan Rice, Hoover Fire Station 2, at ricea@ci.hoover.al.us.
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