25 October 2002 00:00 LOCAL CHILDREN TAUGHT ELECTRICAL SAFETY

The East Midlands Electricity safety team has been taking part in a special event that teaches local schoolchildren, from the Nottinghamshire area, about potential dangers they might face.

Safety Zone is a two-week educational event that began last week in the Severn Trent Water Visitor Centre in Stoke Bardolph near Nottingham.

As part of the event, East Midlands Electricity safety experts demonstrated some potential electrical dangers that the children might encounter on a daily basis. These included a kite tangled in overhead lines, a frisbee stuck on top of a pole transformer and a football that had been kicked into a substation.

The idea behind the ‘mock-ups’ was that the youngsters could see real-life situations before being told by the EME team how to deal with them correctly and, most importantly, safely.

Safety engineer Dave Welbourne was part of the EME safety team at the event.

He said: "We’re always looking for ways of driving home the safety message, particularly to children, and we’ve found that actual demonstrations about the potential dangers of playing near electricity hazards are the best way of getting the message across.”

There are a number of other activities going on at the event, with the local police speaking about ‘Stranger Danger’ and the local Trading Standards officer demonstrating how faulty toys could be potentially lethal. Seven Trent also demonstrated the dangers of playing around pipes and sewers. The schoolchildren were also taught about first aid and resuscitation.

More than 480 youngsters from schools in Nottingham attended last week, with a further 500 taking part in the second week.

ENDS


For further information and pictures contact:

Kathy Doyle on 024 7642 4292