What Is the Fire-ED System?

February 4, 2026 Carolann Christie

A Practical Walkthrough for Fire & Life Safety Educators

If you work in fire prevention or public education, you already know the challenge.

You’re expected to deliver meaningful fire and life safety education—often with limited time, limited resources, and tools that don’t always lead to lasting behavior change. You do the school visits, the community events, the demonstrations… and yet preventable fires and injuries still happen.

That’s the gap the Fire-ED Teaching System was designed to address.

Let’s walk you through what Fire-ED is, how it works, and why so many educators see it as a different—and more effective—approach to prevention.

Understanding the Fire-ED Teaching System

At its core, Fire-ED is a hands-on, interactive fire and life safety education system.

It was designed specifically for:

Fire departments
Fire prevention officers
Life safety educators
Teachers and community partners

And it’s used in real-world settings like:

Schools and classrooms
Community centres and libraries
Fire halls and open houses
Partner-led community programs

Fire-ED isn’t a one-off presentation or a box of giveaways. It’s a teaching system that helps educators consistently deliver clear, practical safety lessons—while actively involving the learner in the process.

How the Fire-ED System Works

Fire-ED places children inside the learning experience, allowing them to actively build and respond to real-world fire safety scenarios.

The easiest way to understand Fire-ED is to picture what happens during a lesson. Instead of children passively listening or watching, they become part of the scenario.

Using the Fire-ED teaching tool, learners:

Identify hazards
Build real-world fire scenarios
Make decisions
Talk through outcomes
Learn correct fire safety behaviours in context

The educator isn’t performing at the audience.
They’re guiding the experience.

Instead of children passively listening or watching, they become part of the scenario.

This approach allows children—and adults—to:

See risks clearly
Understand consequences safely
Practice decision-making
Retain lessons long after the session ends

It’s structured enough to deliver consistent messaging, yet flexible enough to work across different ages, settings, and presenters.

It’s much easier to understand when you see it in action.

Why This Approach Is Different

Traditional fire safety education often relies on:

Passive learning
Memorization
One-time exposure

Fire-ED was built around a different principle:
People—especially children—learn best by doing.

The system works because it:

Is hands-on and interactive
Encourages critical thinking, not rote answers
Allows learners to build scenarios from their own perspective
Reinforces behaviour, not just information

The result is education that sticks—because learners aren’t just told what to do, they actively participate in learning why and how.

Fire department public education programs are lacking substance and we need help!

One stark reality is there are roughly 5-10 new attendees in Burn Camp each year. This shows that stats are increasing – not declining and to me this is unacceptable. We must help young kids learn about dangers around them. Fire-ED provides the resources for us to help children develop critical life safety skills so they know how to react accordingly without getting seriously hurt by fire.

Erik Vogel, Assistant Fire Chief (Ret.)

The Bigger Picture: Preventing Fire-Related Tragedies

Fire-ED is grounded in a simple but powerful principle: most fire-related tragedies can be prevented through effective education.

The long-term goal isn’t just better presentations—it’s:

Safer homes
More informed communities
Youth empowered to recognize risk and act responsibly

Fire-ED is part of a broader movement to strengthen prevention education by giving educators better tools—and giving communities a better chance to avoid preventable loss.