By Mylinda LeGrande | [email protected]

South Jordan City’s Safety and Health Week started Aug. 2 but ended with a hero’s journey as participants ran a special race.

Kids and adults dressed in their favorite super hero’s costume ran a 2.5K around Heritage Park at the beginning of the fair Friday evening on Aug. 5. Race finishers were awarded a metal and a Chick-fil-A cookie at the end, as well as healthy snacks.
 
Jason Wiscott and his daughter Chloe were some of the first to cross the finish line.
 
“My wife is running the race, doing the whole South Jordan Series, so I just showed up with my daughter who ran part of the race,” he said.
 
The police and fire departments were on hand to offer apparatus displays and tours, prescription drug disposal and a life flight helicopter landing. A Life Safety House was there to show property fire safety.
 
Vendors included Target and the South Jordan Chamber of Commerce.
 
Aaron Bronson from Aaron’s Essentials provided the necessary tools, gadgets and equipment for an emergency.
 
“What we tried to do is get quality products that someone, from what we carried, could build a ready ‘bug out’ kit, including water, fire and shelter,” Bronson said. “’Bug out’ means you have a bag ready on a shelf in an emergency if you have to be evacuated from your home.”
 
Robert Erickson, a deputy from the State Fire Marshal’s Office, offered demonstrations and a class on earthquakes.
 
“This is our earthquake trailer where inside are classes going on,” Erickson said. “What we do here is teach anyone from little kids to adults to show them what to expect during an earthquake.  We have a speaker that puts out a really big sound in there because, believe it or not, they do make a lot of sounds as well.”
 
“We are here to promote safety and preparedness,” Fair Coordinator Lori Edmonds said. “We have vendors who have come to show us things they have that can help us be prepared. We have other fun things (such as a DJ and climbing wall), but we had to cancel the ‘Star Wars Movie’ because of the wind factor. We were worried about that, but we are trying to be safe. We had several hundred participants for the classes all week held at the municipal building, city hall, The Gale Center and Fire Station 62. There was a lot of participations in the classes, so we are really happy about that.”
 
Some of the safety and preparedness classes held during the week were about earthquake safety, gun safety, radon awareness, powerless cooking, identity theft, home evacuation, family emergency plan development, eating and preparing dried food, water purification and sanitation, long-term food storage, first aid kits and more.
 
At the fair, there was a raffle for prizes awarded to class participants throughout the week who received tickets for attendance, but you had to be in attendance to win. The more classes someone took the better their odds were for winning.