The Weatherford City Council held a special session on April 14, 2025, at 5:00 PM in City Hall, primarily to appoint a new Chief of Police. Prior to the formal meeting, council members and attendees observed a fire safety demonstration presented by the fire department, which included a live burn show comparing open vs. closed doors. The demonstration emphasized modern synthetic furnishings and the critical safety message "Close before you doze."
All right, we just hit the button. We have ignition. Oh boy, there she goes. Oh man, that is scary. It's scary, yeah. We have smoke coming out over here. Smoke's coming out of the card. What a lot of people don't realize is that the furnishings that are in our homes today are made of synthetic materials. So they burn so much faster than your old natural cotton-filled furnishings used to be. The statistics that we've seen through our research is in about 40 years ago, you had about 17 minutes to get out of your house after the smoke alarm sounded. Now you have less than three minutes. Holy crap. See, this is what we're this is the things that we were. Whoa. Can you feel that? How can you survive that? Seriously. That is insane. All right, go ahead, knock it down. All right, as you remember. Closed door on the left. Open door on the right. And you can see the dramatic difference between the two with the simple closed door. I want you guys to throw some hard hats on and some safety glasses and at least poke your heads in the windows, or you can even walk in the hallway if you want. Give me a word or phrase to describe what you just saw. Anxiety. Frightening. Terrifying. I really didn't expect anything like this. I'll ask you one last time. In the event of a fire, are you safe or sleeping with the doors open or the doors closed? Without a doubt, the door closed. Definitely with the doors closed, and from now on, the doors will be shut at night. Definitely closed. Closed. Definitely closed. And I'm surprised by it. It's always great to be able to get the message out when we can take our research and get it out into the community to change behavior with the message of clothes before you doze. It feels great, and hopefully we can save lives. If there was one bit of advice that you could give friends or family today, what would it be? Close before you doze. Close before you doze. Close before you doze. Close before you doze. Close before you doze. The key fire safety messages we want people to have are one, have working smoke alarms in every level of your home inside and outside every sleeping. Chief of police, we will be going into executive executive session as a council in the South Conference Room. And we will return back in this room shortly for items three, four, and five. We're in recess at 5 p.m. Right, we're back in regular session at 508 p.m.