Shortly after 10 a.m., a few large and mid-sized SUVs started pulling into the bays of the Penn Daw Fire Station just off Route 1 in the Belle Haven area of Fairfax County, Virginia.
Members of the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Service were putting out a different kind of fire — the stress of getting kids ready to go back to school.
As they do every year, the firefighters came together with volunteers to stuff trash bags full of backpacks. The backpacks were then stuffed with school supplies to be picked up by guidance counselors and other school administrators from 40 different schools around the county, most of them elementary schools.
“We have gender-neutral colors; we also have the more typical male and female backpacks,” said Fairfax County Assistant Fire Chief Tracey Reed.
“These backpacks are looking at the basic supplies,” Reed said. “Notebooks, folders, writing utensils, crayons, things like that.”
The backpacks and school supplies the fire department is providing also help out teachers around the county.
“You have teachers who are using their own funds to provide things that are needed in their classrooms,” said Leslie Houston, the president of the Fairfax Education Association. “This makes it very simple.
“This is very helpful not only to the children, but also to their families,” she added.
Among those school officials who pulled their cars into the firehouse was Anastasia Morgan, a guidance counselor at Washington Mill Elementary in the Mount Vernon area. Morgan said the backpack drive helps families know they can rely on their community for help.
“For a lot of the families, it just relieves that stress knowing you can rely on your school, knowing you have people that you can trust who are going to look out for you and get the resources that they need,” Morgan said.
