N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6 • M a r i e m o n t, O h i o • Vo l u m e X L I , N o .
3
Everything You Didn't Know About Our Police & Fire Departments By Margaret Jevic Now, I’ve lived in the Mariemont community since I was 4 years old, and truth be told, I kind of thought I knew everything there is to know about Mariemont – I mean, it’s a pretty small town. However, I’ve recently come to appreciate our police and fire department in an entirely new way. After my husband and I attended our first infant safety class at seven months pregnant it was recommended that we have someone in the fire department install our infant car seat to make sure it was in properly. Who knew this service was provided at fire stations? Definitely not us. Fast forward about a month and we finally took a stab at installing the seat by ourselves, just to make extra sure we weren’t incompetent in this area. It was certainly not one of my more glamorous moments as I plunked the base down in my back seat, hooked the latch, clambered into the back seat, and attempted to tighten the strap. It was a no go. I’m going to say it’s because I am eight months pregnant, but my husband didn’t have any luck either. We looked at each other and realized it was time to make that appointment with the fire department to help us out. I tell you this story because after watching a burly fireman wrangle and subdue our car seat base to within a centimeter of movement, I began to wonder about all of the things our police and fire department does for us we may not know about. I reached out to our chief
of both the police and fire departments, Chief Richard Hines, and he sat down with me to tell me everything I (and maybe you, too) didn't know about our police and fire department. So, I waddled into his office two weeks before my due date, and explained why I was suddenly so curious about their services beyond the obvious. We started with car seats. Car seat installation is provided by many area fire stations, although Mariemont is not currently one of them. They used to have this service, but it does require personnel to attend special classes and obtain a certification so they can not only install the car seat to safety standards, but also pass on important information to expectant parents. Chief Hines told me that
Mariemont is working to have a few staff members certified and will again offer car seat installation to Mariemont’s residents –
AAA Platinum awards are proudly displayed in the Municipal Building. Th e
Vo i c e
o f
t h e
Vi l l a g e
cont'd on page 7