Breckenridge Texan

A few weeks ago, local Girl Scout Leader Kim Fuller was driving her children to school when they saw a house fire near the high school. She said her daughter Riley was so impacted by what she saw that she wanted to do something to help. After doing some research, on Tuesday, members of Breckenridge Girl Scout Girl Scout Troop 8356 presented the Breckenridge Fire Department with smoke detectors to give out to the people in the community that need them.

“For two days (after seeing the fire), my daughter Riley said, ‘Mom what can we do to help with all these fires? I don’t understand why were having so many fires,’” Fuller said.

The mom said she told her daughter that they needed to go talk to the fire department and find out. So her daughter made a list of questions and interviewed Breckenridge Fire Chief Calvin Chaney. Fuller said she asked how the Girl Scouts could bring awareness to what’s going on.

“I interviewed the chief, and he said there had been 11 fires in Breckenridge that last month, so I decided we should give the fire department smoke alarms, and save enough money to buy at least 24,” Riley Fuller said. “I love helping with the fire department and the Girl Scouts together.”

Chaney said when the Girl Scouts approached him and told him they were looking for a project to work on, he told them what they needed to help people in the community is smoke detectors.

“I said that’s one thing that’s proven to save lives,” Chaney said. “She asked me if the girls got out and sold cookies and took some of the cookie money to buy the smoke detectors if we would promote them and go put them out, and I said of course we would.”

Chaney said anyone who needs a smoke detector can come by the Fire Department and pick one up. He said if they don’t have a way to install the smoke detector, he will send somebody out install it for them, whether they live in the city or the county.

“We’ll offer to put them up for them,” Chaney said. “That’s just part of community services, just like they (Girl Scouts) are doing.

In addition to donating the smoke detectors to the fire department, Fuller said, Chaney suggested that when the girls were selling cookies at their cookie booths they could talk to people about smoke detectors.

“He said, ‘Maybe at the cookie booths you can talk to the public,’” she said. “So when we started doing cookie booths in town, instead of asking everybody if you would like to buy some girl scout cookies, we were asking them ‘Do you have a working smoke detector in your home?’ And we started talking to them about that.”

Then on Tuesday during lunch, the girls spoke to their classes about fire safety and the project they were working on. She said they told students to go home that night and talk to an adult and ask them to help them test their smoke detector and that if it didn’t work, they could contact the Breckenridge Fire department and they would help them fix it or replace it.

Fuller said it makes her proud when her Scouts come up with ideas for community projects on their own and then are able to use the proceeds from their cookie sales to help fund it.

For more information on getting one of the smoke detectors, call the fire department at 254-559-6242.

Cutline, top photo: On Tuesday afternoon, Breckenridge Girl Scout troop 8356 donates smoke detectors to the Breckenridge Fire Department to be given out to people in the community. The troop used money from their cookie sales to pay for the smoke detectors. They also brought along some Girl Scout Cookies for the firefighters. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)