Big Boots to Fill Importance
The Importance of the Big Boots to Fill campaign
The Big Boots to Fill fundraising initiative will be used to fund the Put Yourself in Our Boots workplace safety campaign. Put Yourself in Our Boots will educate the public about the importance of workplace safety in keeping first responders safe and allowing them to return home to their families after each shift. And, by making workplaces safe for emergency responders, workplaces will also be made safer for everyone.
The more successful the Big Boots to Fill initiative is, the more successful Put Yourself in Our Boots will be. That means safer workplaces for emergency responders – and everyone else.
Because the workplace of emergency responders is everywhere – whether that’s out on the roads, at an office building or attending a construction site – Put Yourself in Our Boots messages apply to all workplaces and incorporate traffic safety tips.
Traffic Safety
Since 1995, more than 800 emergency services personnel – police officers, firefighters, paramedics and tow truck drivers – in Alberta have been injured while attending to emergencies on the road. Many have been killed. Every day, there are countless near misses.
“It is unnerving to be working at the side of the road, doing your job and tending to an emergency, when motorists are driving literally inches away from you at over 100 km/hr,” says Sgt Cliff O’Brien, a Calgary police officer and a director with the JPMF. “When we’re out there, it becomes obvious that even a split second of inattention by a motorist could be tragic.”
Workplace Safety
On September 29, 2000, Cst John Petropoulos of the Calgary Police Service attended a break-and-enter alarm complaint at a warehouse. John stepped through a false ceiling, fell nine feet into the lunchroom below and succumbed to brain injuries. He was thirty-two. There was no safety railing in place to warn him, or anyone else, of the danger. The alarm turned out to be false.
After John ’s death, members of his recruit class started the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund (JPMF), a non-profit society that educates the public about their role in helping ensure emergency services personnel make it home safely after every shift.
“Emergency services personnel don’t dictate where emergencies occur,” says O’Brien. “Think about your place of work from the perspective of an emergency worker who could be attending after hours, in unfamiliar conditions, with limited or no lighting, and usually in a high stress/crisis situation. In other words, put yourself in their boots for a moment and see your workplace as they would. If it is reasonable to expect a person – you, an employee, a visitor, emergency services personnel – to be there, please make it safe.”
In light of John’s on-duty death, the JPMF’s Put Yourself in Our Boots campaign promotes the message that workplace safety for emergency services personnel is a shared responsibility. Emergency services personnel have high risk jobs but when a community works together, many of these risks can be minimized.
More Information
- About the Big Boots to Fill Campaign
– Where Your Contribution Goes
– How You Can Help Us Achieve Our Goal
