Saturday was a beautiful day to be outdoors and a great day to take advantage of the first Carbon County Community Safety Day at Mauch Chunk Lake Park.

Hundreds of families did just that, bringing their young children to the park to learn about safety and the outdoors. More than two dozen agencies and 14 fire companies and first responders were on site to offer safety-related activities, from car seat and bicycle helmet safety to demonstrations on how to escape a fire or use a fire extinguisher. Thanks to this year's access to Mauch Chunk lake, children were also treated to water safety demonstrations, including water rescue activities and a chance to be fitted with a life preserver and paddle a kayak.This year's program, previously called the Fun-N-Safety Day and held on Fifth Street in Jim Thorpe, was jointly hosted by Safe Kids of Carbon County, Mason Lodge #242, and the Carbon County Commissioners partnered with Sen. John Yudichak. This year's planning committee was also expanded to include park rangers, Carbon County Emergency Management Association (EMA), the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and the Carbon County Sheriff's Office."This is such an important day," said Yudichak. "We've had some unfortunate tragedies in our area," he said, noting that there have been several home fires and fatal car accidents in our area over the past few years."This is really about saying 'Thank you' to the first responders, and to learn from them to have these young kids learning fire safety, and how to be safe at home and in Carbon County," he said. "That's our goal for today. We couldn't have asked for better partners to pull this off."Rep. Doyle Heffley was also present at the event, and has been taking part for multiple years."It takes just a few minutes to learn something about safety, but a split second to use that information and possibly save someone's life," he said. "Education is a big thing when it comes to safety."He noted that his group's table, which gave children a chance to learn more about Pennsylvania wildlife and plant sunflower seeds, had seen hundreds of families by halfway through the event."It's been fun," said Heffley. "We've had a lot of families stopping by. It's a great community event."