On Friday,13th February class 7c went to the English fire brigade with Mrs Griese, Mr Wolförster and Mr Brändel. The fire brigade is at a military base in Marienfeld/ Gütersloh. (One week before Mr Price, who is a fireman, had come to our school. He talked about his job as a fireman. He showed us the equipment of a firefighter, too.) We went to the fire brigade by bus. The bus stop is next to the base. At the entrance of the military base there were soldiers with machine guns.
First we went to a big room, where the fireman told us what to do if there was an alarm: “When you hear the alarm we stay here and wait until we come back.” Then we pushed the alarm button and we heard the alarm. Then we had a break. We had 30 minutes to eat breakfast or just look around. “You can go everywhere”, the firemen said.
After that we were in 3 different groups. There were 8 people in a group and I had group number 1. My group went to the fire truck first. We did the job of a fireman: we checked the equipment of the fire truck. We had a list (4 pages!!!) and checked if they are in the truck. (The firemen must do that every day!)Then the fireman drove the fire truck out, and we could use the hoses (=Schläuche) of the truck. After that we went to the next station, it was a bit theoretical. Another firefighter showed us a powerpoint presentation. We saw that many people die of cardiac arrest (=plötzlicher Herzstillstand). He presented us a heart defibrillator.
That’s an electrical thing. You can use it when a person has a cardiac arrest and you must reanimate ( =wiederbeleben) him or her.
After that we went to the station 3. Another fireman showed us a TIC(thermo image camera). With the TIC you can see which parts of your body are warm. Then we went into a room. It was totally dark and smelly. The fireman made fog with a machine. We tested the TIC in the fog. With the camera we saw our classmates in the room.
The end was the coolest, because we extinguished a real fire with different fire extinguishers (water, foam, CO²). That was really cool.
I want to say “thanks” to Mr. Price and his team. He had invited us to the English fire brigade.
Peter Getz, 7c
