Greenacres kids spend day off learning about government

Thirteen boys and girls toured Greenacres departments, including finance, planning and engineering, public safety and leisure services as part of the annual Florida City Government Week project for students in the city's after-school programs.

During a tour of the planning and engineering department, Director Tom Lanahan told the kids how he started out building things as a child and worked his way up to architecture school at the University of Notre Dame.

Lanahan told them there were several times when he was nervous about beginning something new, such as learning to speak in public or meeting with his first clients as an architect.

"You're going to encounter stuff you're going to be afraid of," Lanahan said. "You just jump in there and do it."

At the Department of Public Safety, firefighter/paramedic Raul Solarte showed the kids the inside of a holding cell, which was painted pink to calm down agitated detainees. They saw the interview room where suspects are questioned and the dorms where firefighters sleep.

Speaking from a rescue truck, Solarte described the defibrillator used to restart stopped hearts in terms the kids could understand.

"We control-alt-delete the heart, and hopefully it starts to pump," he said.

Opening up the sides of a fire engine, Solarte showed them the power saw that cuts through steel and concrete, the chain saw used to carve open roofs, the air packs that firefighters wear in burning buildings and the hydraulic jaws of life used to free people from wrecked cars.

At the end of the tour, Solarte attached a hose to a hydrant and let each kid try spraying water. Even after they were told to lean forward before opening the valve, some of them were pushed back a few steps by the power of the thrust.

Mareisha Ward, a fifth-grader at Heritage Elementary, said she enjoyed using the fire hose but is more interested in police work. "I want to be a police officer or an investigator," she said.