Amongst the thousands of young people who attended Out of the Blue event at Bute Park in Cardiff on July 12th, two young people have been awarded Nintendo Wiis for their winning designs for an anti hoax call and arson campaign.

Control staff from South Wales Fire and Rescue Service were at the event, promoting the anti hoax call and anti arson campaign messages. They explained serious dangers and consequences of hoax calls and deliberate fires during the event. The Control team held a competition as part of this educational drive aiming to drive down false emergency calls and highlight the danger of deliberate fire setting.

Under 16s were invited to design a logo, or create a slogan to highlight the two key themes they had found out about in the Control tent.

121 youngsters entered the competition and after careful consideration a winner in each category was chosen.

Connor Western, aged 13 from Thornhill in Cardiff attends Llanishen High School and came up with the winning slogan for the anti hoax call message. The slogan to top the competition was “Don’t phone and be a liar, someone else may have a real fire!’. Connor attended Whitchurch Fire Station on Monday and was presented with his prize by Assistant Chief Fire Officer Steve Skivens and representatives from Red Watch Control.

Guto Pari, aged 8 of Llanhari won the prize for the best picture depicting the message about anti arson. Guto also wins a Wii and was presented by Firefighter (control) Chris Allen at Fire Control in Pontyclun on Wednesday.

Head of Fire Control, Group Manager Jennie Griffiths said “We were very impressed with the standard of entries we received and enjoyed seeing how the young people had interpreted our messages. Guto and Connor’s designs will now be incorporated into poster campaigns and used around the schools of South Wales.”