Lancaster (1080 KRLD)- The Lancaster Fire Department hosted a "drive-thru home fire safety education event" Friday morning. The fire department was working with the Red Cross as part of a nationwide project to educate 100,000 people about home fire safety.
Lancaster is one of 50 cities in the country considered "at-risk" and participating in the Red Cross' "Sound the Alarm" project.
"COVID-19 has not stopped disasters. It certainly hasn't stopped home fires," says the Red Cross' Lisa Morgan. "Home fires are still one of the most impactful disasters we have across the country."
Firefighters gave information to cars that drove into the parking lot of First United Methodist Church Friday morning. Fire Marshal Shawn Gary says they gave information about fire safety and also helped people create an escape plan.
Gary says they emphasized the need to continue practicing the escape plan before a disaster hits.
"If you don't practice, and you don't practice it frequently, you might seem to forget," he says. "One of the things I do in my home is intentionally set off the alarm at different times of the day or night, so my kids will know, 'I need to get up. This may be a practice. It may not be, but I need to go to my location so my parents can check off that I'm here."
Gary says that practice can ensure a family is prepared in case of an actual fire.
"It becomes like muscle memory. At that meeting place, your parents, everyone in your home will know, 'this is where I'm going to be if that alarm goes off,'" he says.
People could also pick up a smoke detector or sign up to have the fire department install one.
At the same education event, the North Texas Food Bank was holding drive-thru distribution, handing out boxes of food to 300 cars. The food bank's Anna Kurian says demand has dropped from the peak last year, but the organization and food pantries are concerned demand could increase again as kids stay home from school during the summer and government assistance runs out.
"While we do see hope and are glad to see things are slowing down a little bit, we're fully ready for it to pick right back up after this temporary assistance might be gone," she says.
Kurian says the need for assistance was already high before the pandemic. She says COVID-19 just pushed more people to need help and brought attention to the issue.
"What we've seen is with people going through hunger, it's a much more severe situation than it would have been prior to COVID. Hunger was an issue prior to COVID arriving. What COVID did was just turn everything on its head with a lot of people having unemployment or being furloughed," she says. "I think COVID made the idea of hunger much more real for people. We understood it better."
She says the food bank and pantries are also able to give information about options available to families such as meals available at schools during summer break.
"I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful we can return to somewhat of a new normal. It just takes a community coming together, and that's what we see here," Kurian says.
Donations can be made to the North Texas Food Bank here.
