A hot time at the fair: ‘Fire Experience’ attraction offers real thrills

Tuesday, July 9, 2013, 11:50 p.m. — The upcoming Nelson County Fair rides that have you swinging through the air on a huge pendulum, pinned by centrifugal force to a spinning wall while the floor drops out, or dropped to a free fall may offer exhilarating thrills, but the Bardstown Nelson County Volunteer Fire Department has  something planned for this year’s fair that tops that — and teaches people how to save their lives by escaping from a burning room.

For the first year ever, the fire department will set up a simulation of a house fire and invite adults and kids of all ages for what might turn out to be one of the wildest rides at the fair this year.

 Dubbed the “Firefighter Experience,” kids and adults can interact in a hands-on and safe way in the controlled environment of a trailer laid out in rooms like a small house. The experience is designed to offer a realistic experience of what it might be like in a home that just caught fire.  Highlights include simulated smoke, telephone calls to 911, window escapes and much more.

The trailer is a unique and exciting way for the fire department to teach the very real and life-saving principal of Exit Drills In The Home (EDITH).

Firefighters will be manning the trailer, providing supervision and safety for all participants.  If you don’t feel like crawling through smoke to safety, you can watch the action unfold in real-time from outside the trailer on big screen monitors.

The Firefighter Experience trailer will be open at the Nelson County Fair, 6 p.m. to 11 a.m. beginning Monday, July 15th through Thursday, 6 p.m.-midnight Friday, and 2 p.m.-midnight Saturday.

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