Nana’s Fire and Safety School is the product of tragedy and the vision that early education can help avoid such tragedies in the future.

Nana lost 12 family members in a pipeline explosion August 19, 2000. The family had gathered for camping south of Carlsbad, New Mexico as they had multiples times before over many years.

The scene that followed tested Nana, her surviving family members and all who responded in ways they could never foresee.

Nana’s Fire and Safety School was born of this heart wrenching event and is Nana’s way of giving back to those who served and supported her during that impossibly difficult time. Nana became the vehicle of a $10 million endowment to build a firefighter training center.

Permian Basin Regional Training Center is that fire training center. Nana’s Fire and Safety School will be built there, in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Early 2008 aeriel view of PBRTC

With the fire training facility in operation, Chapman wanted to do more. She wanted to do something geared to children and teaching them about safety. She wanted to protect children from the dangers her family experienced.

But how that could be done was a question unanswered until she learned about a children's safety town in Frisco, Texas. Chapman wasted no time in heading there.

In Frisco, she found a mock community with clean streets, child-size electric cars, homes and stores, crossing guards and cross walks, and a fire station, all geared toward teaching children all aspects of personal safety.

She also found that businesses sponsored the buildings that bore their store front logos in the business district of the village. She believed that Carlsbad businesses would do the same if she presented them with the plan she had in mind.

Returning to Carlsbad, Chapman set her plans in motion to build a similar kid-oriented town at the training center, at an estimated cost of about $1.5 million. She also began speaking at local organizations to explain her project and to get business sponsorships.

"It's going to be a safety training school for children in pre-school through fifth grade," Chapman said." We're going to teach kids about street, railroad crossing, weather, Internet and personal safety. We will also teach them about the importance of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. We will have stores, a mall, electric cars for the kids to drive and much more. In all, there will be about 21 buildings, which will be built to five-eighths scale."

She explained that the plan is for local businesses to pay for constructing the building that replicates their store; and in turn, they will lease it to the training center. Thus far, she has commitments from five businesses.

Nana's Fire and Safety School and PBRTC in Carlsbad,NM

Martha Chapman, better known as Nana, is an amazing woman. On August 19, 2000 she lost 12 members of her family in a pipeline explosion south of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Five of them were her grandchildren ages, 5 , 3, 2, and 6 month old twins.

First she fostered a $10 million endowment for a training center in order that emergency responders of all kinds could gain the knowledge, skills and hands-on practice needed to face such a situation.

Hence the creation of Permian Basin Regional Training Center in Carlsbad, NM.

It's a dream of building Nana's Fire and Safety School . A child size village for the sole purpose of educating children and their parents about safety in all of life's not-so-safe situations.

Together they are working hard to keep just one more family from being impacted in the way Martha and the Carlsbad community were on that day.