The very active forest fire season means not only the land, but your property is at risk. One Eastern Kentucky fire department is using a special anniversary to educate people on how to stop everything you own from going up in flames.

You might say Eddie Clark knows a think or two about fire prevention. He's been chief at the Betsy Layne Fire Department for 31 years.

"Betsy Layne doesn't have an "I" in it, it's all teamwork," Clark said.

Saturday, his department celebrated its 60th birthday, all while educating the public about fire prevention.

"We've always held to a high standard. We've always had a lot of discipline in our department and it takes a pretty good guy to get in here. We screen them pretty good," Clark said.

It started as the Betsy Layne Men's Club, but the Betsy Layne Fire Department has since grown to a company with six trucks and some of the most state of the art equipment available.

"I came to this department in 1971 and we had one old homemade fire truck and in 1974 we got another one, and I thought man, we're in tall cotton now. We've got two fire trucks," Clark said.

Those trucks got plenty of action Saturday even though there was no fire, a sight that Firewise officials like to see. In addition to maintaining defendable space, they recommend also keeping your gutters clear, and keeping firewood away from your home.

"And if you get a wildfire with a good wind and it blows the embers up in that firewood, especially if it's well seasoned for a while, it can really get hot and you'll lose your home in a hurry," said Cindy Bennett with Kentucky Firewise.

Something we all hope will never happen, but if a home does catch fire near Betsy Layne, you can rest assured some of Eastern Kentucky's hardest working firefighters will be on the job.

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