MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - On Saturday October 12th, the Meridian Township Fire Department held a Fire Prevention Open House at the Central Fire Station. The purpose of the event is to teach people in the community about fire safety during National Fire Prevention Month. There were live demonstrations of some of the equipment used to save lives such as the Jaws Of Life as well as how to escape a room in a life threatening situation by Battalion Chief Ken Phinney and EMS/Training Chief Bill Priese.

Fire Inspector Tavis Millerov gave fire safety tips for those who couldn't make it to the Fire Prevention Open House saying, "we really promote October with it being fire safety month and then the second week of October is fire prevention week. We definitely talk about it and we ramp up our outreach this month for the community with fire prevention activities and programs, but really the overall thing I’d love to share with everyone is it’s not just one week, and not just one month. It’s all year long. It's the time of the year where we see fires due to home heating reasons. A lot of times people with space heaters, or chimney's or wood stones should be serviced yearly and a lot of times, they skip doing that."

Millerov also added that, "we want to make sure that people going into the colder months of the year are planning it safe. Kitchen fires are the number one cause of fires in America and it's been that way for decades and want to make your following safe practices while you’re cooking as well."

Meridian Township Fire Chief Mike Hamel told HOMTV that, “we can’t get every person with schools all year long. We try to teach them fire safety and this is one more avenue so they can learn, but also see what we do on a daily basis as a fire department. Not just going to fires, hazardous materials and extractions, but also medical emergencies. The more we can teach the families, the safer we are as a community.”