Dad Ryan Bernardi reading Brandon’s essay to the assembly at Sunset school. Photos by Bernie Goldstein
On Tuesday, June 4, Ventura City Fire Chief David Endaya visited Sunset School to present a fire safety essay award to the winning students at an assembly at the school. He brought with him fire-fighting gear and a fire truck was brought there.
More than 800 students submitted their essays and one winner, and two runner ups were chosen.
This is a portion of Brandon Bernardi’s runner up essay:
In this informative essay I will write about what I learned at the Ventura County Fire Academy. Three things that I learned and will tell you about are how to keep you and your family safer, the gear that the firemen need, and cool things I was told about being a firefighter.
First I will tell you about how to keep you and your family safer. One way is to sleep with your door closed. The reason why you do this is because if there was a fire in your house it will reduce smoke from going into your room. The next thing is to check and have a smoke alarm. The last thing is to have a spot where your family would meet if there was a fire.
I will tell you about the gear that the firemen need. One piece is their helmet. The helmets are cool because if they are red that means the person that wears that helmet is a boss or a chief. If the helmet is yellow they are not the boss. Another thing are the suits that they wear are fireproof even the ones that they wear when they are not fighting fires. The last thing that I will tell you about is the piece of equipment that they have on their shoulder. What the device does is if you’re in trouble is there is a button you can push and it will give an alert to the other firefighters and they can help them as soon as possible.
This was the part that I was looking forward to. I get to tell you about cool things when you’re a firefighter. I know I’m not a firefighter, but these are all thing that I was told. One you get to help people. Another thing is you get to drive a firetruck with a bunch of cool stuff. You also are able to spray a firehose that has quite a bit of power. And the last thing that I will tell you about in this paragraph is a ladder that will go 100 feet in the air, which I think is pretty cool.
In conclusion, you have learned about how to keep you an your family safer, the gear the firemen need to do what they do, and cool things about being a firefighter. I hope you liked my essay, and I hope I have a chance at winning this contest.
