“Prevention through education.”
Prevention Visits Classrooms or Other Facility and Specialized Classes
If you would like the Volunteers to visit your classroom or facility for a fire prevention talk or specific classes please contact publiced@warrentonfire.org to discuss you needs. Prevention through education is our first line of defense. Contact us today to schedule your event. The month of October is very busy and early planning is critical.
Fire Station Visits
If you, your family, or your organization would like to visit the fire station please email us at publiced@warrentonfire.org you may also give us a call (540) 347-0522 and ask for the duty officer.
You will need to provide us with some information:
- The date and time you would like to visit
- The number of persons in your group
- Approximate age of visitors
- Any special purpose or needs associated with your visit
- Telephone number to confirm or adjust arrangements
- The Public may generally schedule a visit between the hours of 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM
- To assure safety, large groups with young children must include an adequate number of adult chaperones.
- If driving to the Fire Station, please park your vehicle so that is does not block the response of a Fire Engine or Ambulance. Parking is available behind the station.
- Visitors are permitted only when our Firefighters or Emergency Medical Technicians are at the station.
- The need for WVFC members to attend drills, participate in training classes, complete station duties, maintain equipment and perform inspections, may require us to limit or adjust the time spent with visitors.
- Visits may be abruptly ended or postponed if personnel must respond to an emergency.
Home Fire Prevention
More than 3,500 Americans die each year in fires and approximately 20,000 are injured. An overwhelming number of fires occur in the home. There are time-tested ways to prevent and survive a fire. It’s not a question of luck. It’s a matter of planning ahead.
Further information is available on the U.S. Fire Administration Home Fire Prevention web site.
Smoke Alarms
A properly installed and maintained smoke alarm is the only thing in your home that can alert you and your family to a fire 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Whether you’re awake or asleep, a working smoke alarm is constantly on alert, scanning the air for fire and smoke.
Carbon Monoxide, the Invisible Killer
Each year in America, unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning claims more than 400 lives and sends another 20,000 people to hospital emergency rooms for treatment.
Home Fire Escape Plans
Fire can spread rapidly through your home, leaving you as little as two minutes to escape safely once the alarm sounds. Your ability to get out depends on advance warning from smoke alarms, and advance planning — a home fire escape plan that everyone in your family is familiar with and has practiced. Further information is available from the National Fire Protection Association and U.S. Fire Administration Escape planning sites.
Children may enjoy Sparky’s web site.
Firewise Communities
Many of our local residents live in lovely rural homes that are surrounded by nature. You may wonder where information on protecting your home from the risk of wildfire is located. To save lives and property from wildfire, the National Fire Protection Association’s Firewise Communities program teaches people how to adapt to living with wildfire and encourages neighbors to work together and take action now to prevent losses.
Further information about Firewise Communities is available on the Firewise Community web site.
Firewise Virginia is sponsored by Virginia Department of Forestry.
Address Signs
Accidents and fires happen. When these emergencies occur, precious seconds that are lost trying to find an address can mean the difference between life and death. Do everything you can to help increase your odds — place a highly visible address sign at the end of your driveway and on your home.
As a minimum there should be big, highly visible, reflective, house numbers (at least 4″ tall) on your home and at the entrance of the driveway onto the street.
You may need to have more than one address sign if you live on a private access road. We do not know which house you live in when there is a “Y” at the end of the driveway. Place additional address signs at the end of your access road or driveway and then on your home to assist us in reaching you.
Please remember to keep all brush and grass cleared from around your rural address sign, if we cannot see the sign, we cannot find you.
You can obtain the materials to install a new address sign or replace your non-reflective address sign from many of the local hardware stores or from online vendors at a very reasonable price.
Driveway and Private Road Access for the Fire Department
Can a fire truck or ambulance get to your home? Whether to provide emergency medical services or a structural fire, firefighters and EMT’s must be able to get equipment to the scene. Rural homeowners constructing homes several hundred or thousands of yards from the road must keep in mind that a fire truck is large and heavy, and has a wide turning radius.
Driveways should be at least 12 feet wide and 14 feet of overhead clearances to allow a fire truck or equipment to pass through. This not only includes clearance between trees and limbs along the drive, but also between brick pillars, gates, and statues that might be present at the entrance to the drive. Gate openings should be at least 2′ wider than the roadway.
Culverts under the driveway, private bridges, and the road surface should be able to support the weight of a 20-ton vehicle. Fire trucks loaded with water are heavy.
Grades (slope) should not be greater than 10 percent and should be designed to prevent pooling of water on the road surface.
Driveways over 200 feet (about 70 paces) should have a turn-around of no less than 50′ radius. The turn-around should be within 50 feet of the buildings. Do not expect a fire truck to turn around in the lawn as the ground could be soft. Remember that they might need to go back and get more water. You want them to do that quickly.
Road/street addresses should be clearly marked in block letters/numbers so that fire fighters can easily find the home. (Note: This also works well for the pizza guy.)
Rural Water Supply for Fire Protection
In rural areas, a lack of water mains and pressurized fire hydrants can sometimes impair a fire department’s ability to do its job quickly and efficiently. The success of a fire departments operation hinges on the distance a truck must travel to fill-up and return to the fire. In many cases these fill-up points are often long distances from the fire and the firefighters are unable to maintain an uninterrupted water source at the scene.
Keeping this challenge in mind Fauquier County Fire Companies have established multiple Rural Water Supply fill sites. These fill sites are either Dry Hydrants or ponds/creeks with safe access for a 20 ton fire truck.
If you are interested in assisting Warrenton Volunteer Fire Company by installing an access road, dry hydrant or Fire Cistern, please contact the Fire Chief.
Home Disaster Preparedness — www.ready.gov
Get A Kit –You may need to survive on your own after an emergency. This means having your own food, water, and other supplies in sufficient quantity to last for at least three days. Local officials and relief workers will be on the scene after a disaster, but they cannot reach everyone immediately. You could get help in hours, or it might take days. In addition, basic services such as electricity, gas, water, sewage treatment, and telephones may be cut off for days, or even a week or longer.
Make A Plan –Your family may not be together when disaster strikes, so it is important to plan in advance: how you will contact one another; how you will get back together; and what you will do in different situations.
Be Informed –Some of the things you can do to prepare for the unexpected, such as making an emergency supply kit and developing a family communications plan, are the same for both a natural or man-made emergency. However, there are important differences among potential emergencies that will impact the decisions you make and the actions you take. Learn more about the potential emergencies that could happen where you live and the appropriate way to respond to them.
Local Business Pre-Incident Planning
To increase our readiness for possible emergency incidents in the community, we are asking businesses throughout the community to develop pre-fire incident plans. The purpose of these plans is to record information about the businesses in advance so that firefighters will know the best way to extinguish a fire in a particular building or handle other emergency situations. These surveys will be developed into comprehensive plans that in advance inform firefighters of areas of a building that are vital to a business and its ability to function as well as the building’s construction, the location of hazardous materials and the building’s floor plan. You will find an example of our self-help Pre-Incident Plan in the file download section of the WVFC website. If you have further questions, please contact Fire Prevention.
