A very young hero Kindergarten boy recalls school drill during home fire

Michelle Garrett was clearing the top of her refrigerator when she noticed smoke oozing from the stove. When she opened the oven door, flames shot out.

“I yelled to Daniel [her 5-year-old son] that there was a fire in the house and that he and Alex [his 3-and-a-half-year-old brother] should go outside,” she recalled later. “He screamed back OK as I called 911.”

She hadn’t really expected him to listen, since most boys found fire fascinating. But when she looked out the window, she saw Daniel leading little brother Alex as far from the house as possible.

“I was surprised. I thought he would run into the kitchen to look at the flames,” she said. “I kept asking the boys if they were afraid and neither one of them were. The police arrived first on the scene and extinguished the fire.”

There was no damage except for the pan inside the oven.

“When I asked Daniel later about it, he said he took Alex as far away as possible from the fire the way they had taught him in school,” Garrett said.

But Garrett couldn’t get over an irony concerning the matter. That morning, she had asked a firefighter relation when should she practice fire drills with her children at home.

“He said, ‘Now,’ ” she recalled. “I never thought I would have a real fire six hours later. Daniel’s calmness had a lot to do with his training at school.”

Daniel is a kindergartener at Huber Street School, where teachers and staff have held several drills, but also provided kids with lessons.

“We’ve visited the local fire house,” said Daniel’s teacher, Patrice Phemsint. “We’ve had John Shriever into our class to talk about safety.”

Shriever, a retired fire inspector, often visits local schools to talk about safety issues. Principal Pat Coccuci said he was extremely proud of his teachers.

“This shows that the teachers here are doing what they should be doing, and that the system works,” he said. “This also proves that the children do listen.”

Daniel seemed less impressed with his feat than his teachers. Dressed in a dark blue soccer shirt, he recalled the smoke billowing out of the stove vent and hearing the smoke detector sound.

“I ran out of the house with my brother just like I did in the drill at school,” he said. Then when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he grinned and stated firmly, “a fireman.”

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