FIRE brigade recruits have passed on some of their newly acquired knowledge to an eager audience.

As part of a drive to get the fire safety message over to the population at a young age, 14 trainee firefighters went back to school this week. The Durham brigade made use of the latest batch of recruits at fire service headquarters, at Framwellgate Moor, enlisting them to help in community fire safety activities.

It led to two groups of recruits visiting and talking to classes at Pittington Primary School, near Durham.

Station officer David Turnbull, who is in charge of training and community fire safety, said part of a firefighter's duties involved passing on advice to the public.

He said: "Obviously, we do have operational crews who go into schools, usually at the infant level, to impart their safety knowledge.

"Later in their school lives they receive advice on preventing fire and other possible emergencies, at a safety carousel.

"But inevitably some children slip the net and are missed, for whatever reason. So this is backing up what we already do, trying to get the message over to as many children as possible."

He said the visits helped the recruits in their training and, hopefully, proved valuable to the children.

He said that the recruits involved in the sessions this week were in the seventh week of training, and had already received much fire safety tuition.