Pinal Today

The Summer Water and Safety Days Program in Arizona is returning soon, bringing good news for the state's younger residents.

Arizona City Fire District has announced the return of the Summer Water and Safety Days Program for kids to have fun and learn, according to Pinal Central. The program offers the perfect opportunity to beat the heat and also learn some useful safety techniques.

“We saw that the kids were in dire need of a program here in town that was either free or very low cost,” said Jeffrey Heaton, fire chief of Arizona District.

It was back in 2016 when the fire district program first began and ever since then it has been something that the youth in the community look forward to.

“The program focuses on one physical activity and has a chance to mentor them about fire prevention and awareness, gang awareness and drug prevention,” Heaton said.

All the kids in attendance of the program also receive meals and Heaton said he thinks that this plays a big role in supporting several families in the area that are struggling.

“We have to purchase the slides, the water and the food, so anything that could help us do that would be good,” he said. “The thing we probably go through the most is water, but any financial contributions are always appreciated.” 

The district is expecting somewhere between 100 to 150 children to attend. 

“We don’t really consider ourselves a fire district, we see ourselves as a community service organization, and as a community service organization, this is one of our biggest needs we have for our kids,” Heaton said. “By allowing us to focus on prevention, our incidents involving children in the summertime are down considerably by almost 50% since we have implemented this program. We believe it is because we have an opportunity to keep the kids busy, rather than being at home and possibly getting into mischief.”