Ava’s excellent adventure: a second-grader fights fire
Ava Goldstone takes the captain’s seat in an MBFD fire engine. Photo courtesy MBFD
Ava Goldstone had a busy week. On Thursday, she was preparing to be a “blow-up unicorn” for Halloween, meaning a unicorn of the variety that inflates. But before she even got to the unicorn phase of the week, on Monday morning, she rode a fire engine to her school, Pennekamp Elementary.
“It was exciting because I hadn’t really done it before,” Ava said. “And I don’t think I’ve seen the inside of the front of a fire truck before.”
Ava, a second-grader, was one of six local elementary students whose fire exits plans for their homes were awarded a ride to school provided by the Manhattan Beach Fire Department. A different student — one each from all five Manhattan Beach Unified School District elementary schools as well as American Martyrs School — was picked up at home every day last week and taken to their respective schools.
Ava joined the fire crew Monday morning, when the fire engine arrived at her home on 8th Street in East Manhattan Beach at 7:45 a.m.
“Four firemen showed up, and I saw them through the window and heard them walk up to the door and heard the sound of the fire engine,” Ava said. “I got really excited.”
Brian Yount, the MBFD engineer/paramedic who heads the department’s fire prevention program, said that Ava was so effective at the helm of the fire truck that she quickly earned a promotion.
“Ava is just a great kid,” Yount said. “We promoted her to captain and put her up in the front seat, in the captain’s seat. Part of the prize is they know once we get there they can absolutely tell us where to turn and where to go, and basically how to get to school.”
Ava’s mom, Emily Goldstone, said that part of the prize was not lost on her daughter.
“I told Brian, that’s the piece my daughter remembered, the ‘boss around’ part,” she said. “And he told me, ‘That’s okay. I’m very good at speaking second-grader.’”
The result of this combination — Ava’s promotion, and Yount’s fluency in second-grader-ese — meant that the crew took a slightly unusual route to Pennekamp.
“I believe Ava had us detour to Randy’s Doughnuts,” Yount said. “We might have suggested it. All the kids ended up going to Randy’s Doughnuts or Beckers. Ava went to Randy’s and we got her a doughnut. She’s just a great kid, a deserving kid. The rest of the engine crew all agreed: she did a much better job than the real captain.”
Yount visited all six schools during the second week of October, which is National Fire Prevention Week, and gave 45-minute presentations to every second grade class in town, as he has been doing for the last 12 years. He talks to them about matters such as fire alarm and kitchen safety and entreats them to submit fire escape plans for their homes.
“It’s been my pet project and is absolutely about as fun as a project can get,” Yount said. “Obviously, as firefighters, we deal with a whole other side of life people usually chose not to deal with. That’s our job. And so it’s really great to do something like this every once in a while. The idea is to get people talking.”
Which is exactly what happened in the Goldstone home. Ava came home and gave her family some great tips, such as closing bedroom doors at night so if a fire does happen air currents don’t fan flames.
“Because air helps fire grow,” Ava said. “So keep your doors closed when you go to sleep at night.”
Emily Goldstone said that prior to this she’d not yet had a talk with her daughter about what to do in case of fire, in part because as a child she received a talk about home fires at school that scared her out of her wits by giving her the feeling “of not being safe in your own home.”
“I couldn’t sleep the next few nights,” she said. “But Brian has a way of conveying information without scaring them.”
Ava’s winning fire escape route included little yellow arrows, drawn on small sticky notes, pointing at least two ways out of every room. Her map was innovative in that instead of just drawing it on a piece of paper she built a 3-D model, complete with little fire ladders that extended out second-floor windows. They were made out of paper clips.
“I have a ladder so you don’t have to stay in there, you can just get the ladder and it’s metal so fire won’t burn on it,” she said. “So you just drop it down and it’s just going to start unrolling. You don’t have to wait.”
Yount said the hardest part of the project was choosing the winners.
“I know I make the day for one little kid and break the other hundred-or-so’s hearts,” Yount said. “The main thing is for them to create this map. None are really that much better than another, but we do look for the ones that are a little more creative and just show a little more thought. Ava’s certainly was that for her school.”
All the kids at all the schools get a t-shirt and an MBFD goody bag. And all the kids will be commended at a Nov. 3 City Council meeting. Yount noted that now that the program has been going for 12 years, the kids from the very first year are now freshmen in college.
“It’s about 600-second graders a year, and that’s about 7,200 kids and 7,200 families that have gone through this program and are safer because of it,” Yount said.
Four Mira Costa High School students who were a part of the program 11 years ago will also be at next week’s council meeting. Yount said the feeling of connection MBFD firefighters are able to form with the community is one of the job’s best rewards.
“In these times, where the politics are involved with all the talk about LA County and Manhattan Beach Fire, it’s moments like this where I’m really proud to be part of the Manhattan Beach Fire Department,” he said. “And to be part of a community like this.”
Other winners this year included: Molly from American Martyrs; Kayla from Grand View; Kylee from Meadows; Lara from Pacific; Ava from Pennekamp; and Kendall from Robinson.