The People's Burn Foundation (PBF) was established as a nonprofit organization in 1997. Della Hines, a burn survivor, founded PBF after she suffered the loss of two of her three children in a 1991 apartment fire. In memory of Della's children, Nicholas and Mary, Della founded PBF.
Beyond the highly acclaimed To Hell and Back national prevention initiatives for firefighters, PBF works on a grassroots level throughout the Midwest serving burn survivors and victims of fire loss. With a state-of-the-art burn unit serving three states, PBF works with family members and burn survivors to preserve the emotional and financial integrity of the family during the long burn recovery process. The Foundation also provides emotional support services for burn survivors (adult and children); operates Brave Hearts’ camp, a one-week emotionally rehabilitative camp for burn survivors; and, offers a service known as Extinguish the Need to rehabilitate families following total fire loss, in tandem with service provided by the American Red Cross. Since PBF was founded in 1997, its network of burn survivors has grown from nine to more than 700. PBF also has two educational programs, CC & the Cool Rule and McAxe & the Fire Crew, both of which were formally evaluated and tested and considered valuable tools for teaching burn prevention to second and third grade students.
Della’s vision was to create the first burn camp in the state of Indiana, because there was no program that provided emotional healing opportunities for young burn survivors. With a small Board of Directors and a committed group of volunteers, PBF hosted the first burn camp for children in the state of Indiana in 1998. Nine children and 15 volunteers attended the one-week residential camp. Children who had never known other burn survivors, found courage and strength to overcome their scarring and disfigured bodies. Parents of the children all warned that they would not take off their clothes to go swimming. But, on the second day, there wasn’t a t-shirt worn at the lake. The children felt normal and secure. For the first time since their injuries, they were free from embarrassment, humiliation, or fear. They felt and learned unconditional love and acceptance. That one week changed the lives of all who attended and simultaneously encouraged PBF to extend its mission to raise awareness about the life long impact of severe burn injuries to motivate the practices of burn and fire safety --- to prevent the injuries.
Less than a year after the first Brave Hearts’ camp, a residential fire claimed the life of a 13-year old young girl, Christy Boles, and seriously burned her father. The day after, PBF received a call from the school administration asking that, “Somebody help the students through the tragedy.” The PBF objective was to comfort the students by explaining their help was necessary, but at the time, a person in grief was incapable of understanding the need for help. When they digested the circumstances of a mother grieving the loss of her only daughter, while praying for her husband’s survival, simultaneously planning a funeral, with no place to call home, the students moved to a different level of healing and altered their course to help in a way that would memorialize Christy’s life.
With Christy in mind, they thought of offering aid and assistance to all people victimized by fire in her memory, which became a program known as Extinguish the Need (ETN). The objective for ETN was to insure that any family victimized by fire would have a place to go where they could replace all of their possessions free of charge, and simultaneously find the strength to begin the rebuilding process.
In less than a month, students devised a plan for a citywide collection drive, identified a location to host the event (Howe High School), secured sponsors, and organized the event. One month later, their event would serve more than 40 fire victims in the city of Indianapolis. On that day, families entered a facility set-up like a department store where students were standing by to help them shop, free of charge, to replace their belongings. One family walked in with three children, none of which had shoes or coats --- their fire had been the night before. The students could still smell the smoke on the family. It was a surreal experience and it brought powerful meaning and even more determination to their mission.
For the next three years, students at Broad Ripple High School organized and hosted the event, which lasted for only seven days. Inevitably, when the event ended, there was a tragic apartment fire or house fire and, unfortunately, we could do nothing to assist those families. Many sponsors and community leaders recognized the significance of the Extinguish the Need program and encouraged students to nominate it for community service awards to generate public awareness about the needs of fire victims and show how ETN filled a “gap” in the social service arena. In its second year, the students nominated the program and it received 13 first place awards at the Kiwanis International annual convention, which brought the sought after attention and the possibility of creating a long-term program that would be open and operating any time fire struck.
In 2003, the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust believed the program to be a necessary component for the community and granted the construction costs. Skinner Broadbent donated the space and the students realized their dream and cemented the life of Christy Boles in her community that would serve families for years to come. Opened in 2004 with the founders from Broad Ripple High School, the program has now served over 1,500 people who have lost their homes to fire and works in direct partnership with the American Red Cross and all Indiana fire departments.
As with all who become involved in PBF, the initial thought is always “I don’t know anything about burn and fire safety.” The Broad Ripple High School students, so taken by their experience with the families, wanted to develop a burn prevention program for second and third grade students because the thought of young children burned sickened them after seeing photographs from camp. With that as a key motivator, PBF helped the students structure a committee of fire prevention specialists to develop a burn prevention program. In a short three months, students conceptualized a character to teach burn safety and wrote the script for what would eventually become a coloring book. Their ideas were new, fresh, on point, and targeted a high-risk population for burn injury. PBF undertook the project, secured funds through the Kiwanis Foundation, and published CC & the Cool Rule. CC is short for Cool Catt. The Cool Rule is Can it burn you? Can it not? Is it cool or is it hot? Since its launch in 2002, 50,000 students have participated in the testing component and in a well-documented program for second and third grade classrooms.
Garnered as a new approach to teaching this age demographic, Dr. Rajiv Sood, Medical Director, Fairbanks Burn Center, embarked upon a study utilizing data from the controlled testing process and published an abstract, presented at the American Burn Association Conference in 2003. Is CC & the Cool Rule an Effective Modality to Teach Burn and Fire Prevention? Results revealed pretest men =11.2 (57.5%); post-test mean =14.5 (73%) and the difference between pretest and post-test was statistically significant (p<0.001, 95% CI 11.44-14.27) which verified the effectiveness of the program.
In July 2003, still run by volunteers, PBF met tragic circumstances again, with the box truck fire on I-465 that severely burned 13 painters, two of which died from their injuries. Initially, it was the Foundation’s primary responsibility to preserve the integrity of the families to insure emotional and financial survival during their loved one’s long recovery process. Simultaneously, Anne Ryder, the Foundation’s Honorary Chair, convinced producers and the General Manager of WTHR-13 to permit her to film a documentary inside the walls of the burn unit to follow the families and the burn survivors through the recovery process. Her objective was to “show the world the reality of a burn injury” and to pick-up where Matt Rainey left off. Matt Rainey won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his photo documentary after he followed two students, tragically burned in the Seton Hall fire, through the long, torturous burn recovery process. Ann attended the Foundation’s event featuring Matt Rainey and for the first time, understood how burn injuries will change lives forever.
One year later, Anne’s documentary aired, winning numerous national awards. The TO HELL AND BACK (THB) documentary accurately portrays most doctors' definition of a burn injury: the most incomprehensible, unpredictable, unforgiving and most assuredly, devastating injury the human body and psyche can suffer. Finally, PBF had a tool to teach the reality of burn injury, with one complication – a WTHR copyright.
Initial conversations with the WTHR General Manager indicated THB was proprietary as a copyright production and nobody, but nobody was entitled to a copy. However, that changed when PBF requested permission for a group of fire department training instructors and EMS personnel at the Indianapolis Fire Department to view the documentary. The Director of Training said, “We’ve never had anything like this to teach firefighters about burn injuries. There is no program available at any training academy that begins to address the reality of burn injuries for firefighters.” The EMS Director said, “This is an excellent tool for first responders. It can help us teach them why fluid balance and initial assessment is so critical to the burn patient’s survival in transport.”
Taking those comments, PBF brought on board the Department of Homeland Security to help WTHR understand the need for the documentary to teach firefighters about the reality of burn injuries. Fortunately, WTHR listened and granted exclusive rights of distribution to PBF to build educational components around the documentary, for distribution to every fire department in the United States, free of charge, with Department of Homeland Security funding. When the program launched at the Fire Department Instructor’s Conference (FDIC) in 2005, Canadian firefighters previewed the documentary and carried the program back to Canada. Within two weeks, the Canadian Fire Marshal sent a request for 2,500 copies to insure all Canadian fire departments received the program. Although PBF expressed concern about language barriers, we were told “To Hell and Back” speaks to all firefighters, regardless of the language.
The phenomenal results of THB I allowed PBF to submit and receive a $750,000 DHS grant in 2006, to place it online for interactive training so it was available anywhere, at any time. The second part of the project involved building an educational program around the THB documentary for high school students, the adult population, and Juvenile Firesetters. In April 2007, PBF launched THB II at the FDIC in Indianapolis and on the heels of the launch, 38,000 fire departments received free copies of both programs. This second project most definitely had impact because firefighters received a teaching tool for high-risk demographics to use in their communities. PBF again filled a gap in the world of burn and fire prevention that exists in the educational programming.
On August 3, 2007, PBF received its third DHS grant for $1M to develop what we believe to be a third and final chapter of To Hell and Back for college students, another at-risk group, and a final interactive training component for advanced firefighter, burn prevention training. Both projects will launch in April 2008.
What is the measure of success of THB? Effective January 2008, To Hell and Back is mandatory training for Firefighter I and Firefighter II classes and THB II is mandatory for Fire Officer I and Fire Officer II classes in the state of Arizona. The THB development team is currently drafting new standards for the National Fire Protection Association to propose THB I as mandatory training throughout the United States.
The Foundation’s programs are successful and continually evolving to fill gaps in service and education. But how is this done with such limited staff? Through the innovative process of utilizing its core constituency, the fire service, to assist in the development and delivery of its programs. PBF did not have the resources to build a local army of volunteers and organize their talents, so it became incumbent upon us to appeal to those who have a desire to heal, a desire to help, and a desire to teach --- firefighters. Tom Hanify, President of the Firefighters Union of Indiana, sums it all up by saying, “Being involved is a form of therapy. We see people at the worst of times. We do all we can to stop their emotional and physical pain and that’s good, but not always fulfilling. When we get involved in the foundation’s work, we get to be part of the healing process. We are part of educating and rebuilding of lives.”
Tom DeMint, Battalion Chief of the Poudre Fire Authority feels compelled to speak about PBF as he lectures throughout the United States. “PBF is a new leader in burn prevention education for firefighters and in our communities because they understand the reasons we must prevent burn injuries. They understand much more so than we ever did and we are intentionally exposed to burn injuries every day we’re on the job. PBF is making us safer firefighters and in the end, we will make safer communities.”
Today, Brave Hearts’ Camp is staffed by firefighters from throughout the United States and three states, (Denver, Arizona, Georgia) are working to replicate the Extinguish the Need program to serve their communities. In applying for this award, it is crucial to understand that the Foundation developed the core of its programs with volunteers who had to be innovative in their approach to developing and accomplishing projects in timely fashion to continue donor support to secure the infrastructure of PBF. In all programs, PBF acts as a strategic channel that connects resources, experts, and current social service agencies, to insure distribution of properly evaluated and effective programs, while simultaneously expanding the size of its volunteer army to deliver its programs. In the end, we maximize donor dollars by utilizing existing resources and donor commitment to the mission continues to escalate.
In conclusion, one need only look back 10 years to capture the spirit felt at the first Brave Hearts’ Camp and look forward through the development of each program, all born from tragedy, but intricately woven into fine silk that supports positive trends in burn prevention education and service to burn survivors throughout the United States and Canada.