Out of the Frying Pan
https://smokeybear.adcouncilkit.org/
As the hot summer months round the bend and a packed holiday season rushes towards us, it’s important to keep a healthy perspective on the truly important things in life: good food, family, friends, and responsible fire prevention and mitigation strategies.
That’s right! October is Fire Prevention Month–not that every other month shouldn’t be as well, of course. More specifically, October plays host to Fire Prevention Week, the 8th through 14th. Held in commemoration of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, this event has taken place since 1922, and was proclaimed a national week of observance by President Coolidge in 1925. Now having existed for over a hundred years, Fire Prevention Week is the longest-running public health awareness event of its kind. Fittingly, the longest-running public service announcement campaign, Smokey Bear, has very similar goals.
Originating solely as a public ad campaign featuring a fictional bear in 1944, Smokey Bear’s existence took a sudden and unexpected turn in 1950. Sent out to battle a fire in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico, a group of firefighters stumbled across a baby bear wandering the fire line. Unfortunately, both the fire crew and cub were caught in the blaze, and though the crew avoided casualties, the bear cub was badly burned. While receiving treatment for his wounds, the cub became a country-wide phenomenon and was sent to the National Zoo in D.C., where he became the real-life Smokey Bear. This living Smokey became so popular, the US Postal Service gave him a personal zip code for his mountains of incoming mail and gifts. After passing away in 1976 , having lived quite a luxurious life for a bear, Smokey was returned to his original home in New Mexico and buried in the Smokey Bear Historical Park.
While Smokey’s own story is heartwarming, his necessity as an icon and public service is without doubt. An estimated 90% of all wildfires are caused by human activity. Camping, cooking, infrastructural failure, and, most absurdly, baby gender-reveal parties have torched millions of acres of land, both inhabited and uninhabited. Billions of dollars in damage have been caused by irresponsible, careless, and patently ridiculous behavior. And so, Smokey Bear’s message maintains its relevance; his simple request to be considerate of the world around you is blunt and uncompromising, with no hand-wringing. “Only you can prevent forest fires.”
Fire Prevention Week’s ultimate message is similar, one predicated on not repeating the failures of the past. While buildings in cities are thankfully no longer primarily built from wood, several thousand people die in preventable fires each year. Actions as straightforward as changing the batteries in a smoke detector, or keeping an up-to-date fire extinguisher in the kitchen will go a long way to increasing the safety of your own home. While developing a personal fire plan for your household can seem like overkill, knowing how to respond in an emergency is key to protecting yourself and your loved ones, and it makes first responders’ jobs easier as well.
For more information about National Fire Prevention Week, and its sponsoring organization the National Fire Protection Association, check out their website at www.nfpa.org.
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In other news, researchers in Sweden recently managed to extract RNA from a specimen of the extinct species Thylacinus cynocephalus, the Tasmanian Tiger. This is the first time RNA molecules from an extinct species have been extracted and analyzed, and will likely lead to more zoological specimens receiving the same treatment. De-extinction efforts’ scientific value is still up for debate, but this first-of-its-kind event has serious potential for other avenues of research as well, including studying historic and precursor disease variants. Mostly though, it’s neat.
—Joe Schultz
https://www.nfpa.org/Events/Events/Fire-Prevention-Week/About
https://www.dukeupress.edu/understories
https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/story-smokey-bear
https://smokeybear.com/en/smokeys-history/story-of-smokey
https://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2023/09/08/gr.277663.123
