PASCACK VALLEY AREA—The Bergen County Juvenile Fire Prevention Program — the only service of its type in the county — needs monetary donations and fire safety volunteers to rejuvenate the program.
It’s aiming to save and change lives.
Formed in 1987, the BCJFPP has provided more than 2,000 children aged 18 and under and their families with community education prevention, fire setting assessments, individual and group education sessions, and if necessary, clinical services.
The program partners with CarePlus NJ, a mental health clinic in Fair Lawn and Paramus, and its clinicians and intervention specialists to rehabilitate youth who display curiosity or have engaged in fire setting. There is no charge to families.
“The program remained very active through today, but Covid-19, declining membership in the volunteer fire departments and reduced funding has put a recent strain on the program,” said its founder George Lucia Sr.
A veteran firefighter from the Pascack Valley who retired from active service in 2017 after 10 years of his most recent service to a California fire district as battalion chief and fire marshal, Lucia is founder/CEO of Lucia Risk Reduction and Fire Protection Consulting.
“You don’t necessarily have to be a firefighter or someone who’s good with kids,” he told Pascack Press last week. “We’re looking for any kind of help we can get to make this program active and give us stability to go on in the future.”
Current or retired firefighters interested in volunteering can call Keri Diamond at (201) 265-8200, ext. 5620. To refer youth to participate in the program, call Jamie Lagana at ext. 5635.
Lucia most recently appeared in our pages in January, in an appeal to surprise his mom, Patricia Ann Lucia (Stanbury), now living out of state, with 90th birthday cards and letters from lifelong friends in Hillsdale and the wider Pascack Valley.
He was a firefighter for the Woodcliff Lake Fire Department from 1969 to 1973. From then to 2000 he served as firefighter, fire marshal, OEM coordinator, police officer, code compliance official, building inspector, and fire chief for Hillsdale.
He said he founded the non-profit BCJFPP after receiving a call on duty about a child who had started a fire. When he returned home to his own children of a similar age, he realized that the department’s usual response of explaining how matches are dangerous and giving out coloring books and plastic fire helmets did not always work.
“That kid may start a fire again that night,” Lucia said. “It caused me to say we need to have a program, collaborate with some close friends that were also in the fire departments in the area and get mental health professionals involved.”
The program — funded through a state grant, support for CarePlus, fundraising and direct donations — emerged during conversations with local firefighters Billy Lynn and Buddy Mullay, and with freeholder Charlotte Vandervalk and CarePlus CEO and President Joe Masciandaro. They talked about how the same children in their towns were setting fires in a repeated way.
“They posed the question, Doesn’t that mean something?” Mascriandaro said. “A light went off in my head. Whenever anyone engages in self-destructive or dangerous behavior, we at least have to search for reasons why. I’ve been in mental health for many years, so the topic vibrated with me and it made sense.”
Children who are also exposed to fire from their parents — such as cigarettes, matches, and lighters — have a higher likelihood of experimenting from their natural curiosity of fire, according to Lucia.
He added that the mental health component of juvenile fire play comes down to dysfunction in the family, including alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic abuse, and results in fire play as a call for help.
“We fight the stigma that mental health presents to the public,” Lucia said. “We had to make it more normal that fire play curiosity is something that could be treated, along with any other juvenile mental issues today, like depression, anorexia, and kids being confined from Covid-19.”
To screen for mental health issues, children in BCJFPP receive clinical evaluations by CarePlus employees when necessary as part of the program’s curriculum. The child has the opportunity to be paired with a therapist to undergo psychotherapy, Mascriandaro said, and then can further be coupled with a psychiatrist for medication if a higher level of intervention is required.
“Depending on the age of the kids and the circumstances, we generally try to pursue this as a family therapy situation,” Mascriandaro said. “Primary prevention involves education and raising the level of understanding a child may have about the dangers that are posed. In the least concerning cases, it may be a trip to the firehouse and learning stop, drop, and roll. This structural, didactic program goes beyond that type of intervention.”
Mascriandaro emphasized that the BCJFPP tries to interrupt the progress of pathology to make sure a child understands the consequences of their actions and changes their behavior. If a child needs a higher level of intervention, the program can refer them to specialized programs that help with kids who are pathological firesetters.
“To get this program to really be sustainable, we would really appreciate contributions and donations, and we’re going to be pursuing that as part of an implementation strategy,” Mascriando said.
For more information, visit https://careplusnj.org/children-family-services.