“What’s the first thing you do when you get in car?” a Washington State Patrol trooper asked the first graders clustered around him.
“Seat belt!” the children replied.
The trooper quizzed the kids as a part of the second annual Safety City event Thursday at the Washington Department of Transportation’s Vancouver headquarters. The event — hosted by the State Patrol, WSDOT and the Police Activities League — drew more than 1,000 children this week from numerous Clark County elementary schools.
The students walked through stations led by first responders from a variety of local agencies to talk about safety skills for bicycles, cars, boats, crosswalks, railroad crossings and more.
“It’s about community building,” Trooper William Glahn said. “It’s about making sure that these kids have good experiences with law enforcement, so that we can let them know that we’re here to help them, right? And if we can instill that into them today, I think we’ve done our job.”
The students got to clamber inside the cab of a recycling truck, practice looking both ways before crossing railroad tracks and help Washington State Department of Fish & Wildlife officers choose correctly sized life jackets. Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle pretended to be an oncoming train to test if the children were paying attention to traffic before crossing.
First and second grade teacher Alli Rao said her Roosevelt Elementary students had fun getting out of the classroom.
“It’s exciting for them to learn and see what all they’ve been interested in — seeing what a garbage truck looks like in the inside, and they all were really interested in seeing the boat and this truck, too,” Rao said of the WDSOT incident response truck.
Roosevelt teacher Adrian Mendez said he enjoyed seeing the kids’ curiosity and their interest in the responders’ tools.
“I know they have a lot of questions, and this is a good way of telling them that police are here to help us,” Mendez said. “This is really showing them that they’re on their side.”
Becca Robbins: 360-735-4522; becca.robbins@columbian.com; @brobbinsuo
