BELLE FOURCHE—A whole afternoon dedicated to learning about community safety was the highlight of a gathering of area service vendors for the Butte County Community Safety Day at Hermann Park on August 23.
The idea to showcase all of the services that are offered in Butte County came during a local emergency planning session. Annie Capp, Butte County Auditor explained, “I’m on the LEPC committee, the local emergency planning committee, I just brought up why don’t we have some kind of a Safety Day for the county? We have all these great groups that are doing a lot for the safety of our citizens, so why don’t we just tell people what we’re doing!”
From that idea, this event was born, and planning and pulling it all together began. “We were trying to think of a good time—a date, and time—this was a date where most of us were all available to come together and make it work,” said Capp. “And then I had a thought, since we’re doing it from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 on a Saturday, let’s try to get a bunch of food trucks here! People can enjoy lunch and walk around and check out all the vendors.”
And that is what happened. PooterQ Food Truck offered food while many services that are offered in Butte County were represented at the vendor fair. The City of Belle Fourche, Butte County, Belle Ambulance, Newell Ambulance, Butte/Lawrence Extension, Belle Fourche Economic Development Corp, Whatever It Takes Coalition, LEPC, Fire Departments, Belle Fourche Police, Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce, Freshman Impact, Bureau of Reclamation, City of Newell, Irrigation District, Butte Electric Cooperative, TREC Badlands Head Start, Butte County Sheriff and South Dakota Department of Health were all on hand.
Capp explained that the goal of the day was to bring awareness to the community about everything that they are doing to help keep people safe and educate them about all of the resources that are available to reach out to. “Community education—I’m all about that,” she said.
One of the vendors that had a popular educational display was Freshman Impact. They are a non-profit organization out of Rapid City that currently works with Newell School and targets freshman. “We deal with risk taking behaviors of teenage students,” explained Rick McPherson. “When we heard of this Safety Day, obviously, this fits right in with our group.”
Their display was an actual car that was involved in a drinking and driving tragedy and visitors could press a button and hear a recording of events that happened. Butte County Safety Day was one of the first events where the new display was used.
Targeting risky behaviors in freshman students in an attempt to prevent more tragedy is what Freshman Impact does. “We deal with anything from teen suicide, to social media and to texting and driving, drinking and driving, and teen violence—you name it—whatever freshman high school students deal with risky behaviors. We try to help prevent some of that,” shared McPherson.
A lot of the vendors had handouts, stickers, games, coloring sheets and booklets that targeted teaching children about services for them and their families if help is ever needed. South Dakota Emergency Management, in keeping with their theme, handed out emergency blankets and flashlights along with tattoos and stickers for kids and family planning documents and for individuals with disabilities.
This was the first time that Butte County sponsored Community Safety Day and they hope to do it again next year. “It’s the first ever, and hopefully it will get even bigger,” said Capp.
Read the full issue of the Belle Fourche Beacon by clicking here.
