Sounding the Fire Alarm on ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’

Julianne Quirk’s English class put away books and writing pads Friday to hear a guest speaker talk about something a little more unusual: Beavis and Butt-head.

“Do you think it would be funny to blow up your own cat with a fire cracker?” asked Emmy Day, looking a seventh-grader straight in the eye. She was referring to an episode from the MTV cartoon “Beavis and Butt-head,” an animated television show featuring two teen-agers who destroy things and animals and play with fire.

“Is Beavis a real person?” Day asked, raising her voice.

“No!” answered 30 students at full volume.

Day, a public education officer with the Orange County Fire Department, was invited to Fred L. Newhart Junior High to counteract ideas the television show might have planted.

The show has been the center of a national controversy, which erupted on Oct. 6 when a child in Ohio set his bed on fire with a cigarette lighter, killing his sister. The boy’s mother blames the popular cartoon. Since then, MTV has announced that it is revising the show to take out any references to arson.

At the outset of Quirk’s English class, almost all of the students waved their hands excitedly when asked if they watched the show. Much to Quirk’s and Day’s dismay, some even shouted out the trade-mark call of one of the show’s characters: “Burn, Burn, Burn.” This was going to be a harder lesson than Day thought it would be.

Using a number of props such as a melted telephone and a video about a student that started a fire that caused $5 million in damage, Day told the students the often devastating consequences of playing with fire.

She held up a model rocket, which is illegal to use in Orange County except at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley. That same rocket used by a child set off a three-day fire in Carbon Canyon that resulted in about $1 million worth of damage, Day said.

In Tustin, two children playing with matches started a fire in a closet, and “this is what was left,” Day said, holding up a burnt stuffed animal.

The connection between what youths see on television and do can be quite direct, Day said, telling about a 10-year-old Orange County boy who lost use of his hand after an explosion caused by WD-40 and a cigarette lighter. One “Beavis and Butt-head” episode featured a character setting another’s hair on fire by putting a lighted match to to spray from an aerosol can.

“It’s one thing when it’s on TV and movies and it’s something else when it’s in real life,” she said. “You need to tell the difference. . . .”

Quirk, who estimated that 90% of her class watches the show, invited Day to speak after several students wrote about playing with fire and explosives in their autobiographical sketches.

A major “Beavis and Butt-head” fan, Jarrod Metchikoff, 12, used to “line them (firecrackers) up in a tube and shoot them in the sewer pipe” until his mother found out. Brett Heimstra, 12, said he set off firecrackers in manholes and sewers until his mother discovered them and he “heard some stuff about how it’s dangerous.” Elizabeth Hastings, 12, said she knows a boy who lights firecrackers in portable toilets.

While the class had a pretty good level of knowledge about the elements that make a fire--fuel, oxygen, and heat--some were a bit shaky on exactly how to extinguish it.

“Where near the stove do you keep the baking soda for extinguishing fires?” Day asked. A girl in the front row thought she would keep it above the stove.

“Above!” exclaimed Day. “You’d burn your hand off trying to reach for it.”

With the help of the students, Day listed the different types of fires and how they should be put out, cautioning them never to use water on an electrical fire.

“If you were lucky, it would curl your hair to look like mine. If you were unlucky it would kill you,” she said.

Day said that most children have no contact with fire except for what they see on television.

“No wonder the kids think it’s real,” she said.