With National Fire Prevention Week starting on Oct. 4, students at Piedmont Elementary got to experience what they should do if they're trapped inside a burning building thanks to some help from the Piedmont Fire Department last Tuesday.

The department borrowed a fire safety house from the Jacksonville Firefighters Union to help teach students at Piedmont Elementary about the proper way to escape from a building.

The house is a camper trailer that is designed like a miniature two-story house and is equipped with a fog machine.

"We put kids inside it and tell them about how to escape a house," Piedmont Fire Department Captain Mike Ledbetter said. "We tell them about the importance of a smoke detector and crawling low on the floor so they can breathe to get out of a house."

The house fills the hallways up with a harmless fog from the machine to simulate the smoke that will rise to the ceiling of a building, forcing people inside to go to the ground where the cleaner air is.

Students were put inside the building and made to crawl out the front door, just like they would in a real-life situation.

"It's an expensive tool, but it's a simple tool to use," Ledbetter said. "We hope that they're never in a fire, but we teach them that this is how it would be."

The house itself had the captive attention of the students, but when the fog began to roll into the house, Ledbetter said the kids were amazed.

"When the fog comes in, we have a little smoke detector that we set off," he said. "That's when everybody goes and crawls out."

Because Piedmont does not own its own safety house, the department borrowed the one from Jacksonville now because of how frequently departments use their own during National Fire Prevention Week.

"We did it early so that this when we back to talk to the kids for Fire Prevention Week, this will be fresh on their minds," Ledbetter said.

National Prevention Week traditionally falls on the week of Oct. 9, the anniversary of the infamous Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that destroyed approximately four square miles of the city.

"That's where all fire prevention actually got started," Ledbetter said. "You had over 300 deaths, 100,000 homeless and 17,000 structures destroyed."