ORANGE BEACH — How hard can it be? Buy a car seat for your child, look at the pictures, put in the back seat following the instructions and let’s roll.

It’s not as easy as all that, Orange Beach Fire Department Training Officer Suzanne Moeller says. In fact, her department had Safe Kids Worldwide stationed at Children’s Hospital come in to teach a three-day class for on the subject.

“This was three days of car seat and child restraint information and that seems like a lot,” she said. “What can you put in a classroom for three days? You would think it was cut and dried, read the manual, whatever.”

But the simple act of running the seat belt through the proper loops and letting it tighten down is not as simple as it sounds.

“Car seat installation and inspection, how to install all kinds of car seats, restraint seats in all kind of different vehicles, different types of seat belt systems that go with them,” she said. “And the different age groups that fit into each one of those types of child restraints.

“We were learning about the different type of seat belt systems, the different type of cars, the anchor points, the tether points, important safety things that we as firefighters need to look for post-crash. How do you get a person out of this type of situation. It’s real helpful on a lot of different levels for us.”

Moeller said a growing need prompted the class for firefighters and anyone else who wanted to participate.

“We get a lot of people coming up to the fire station saying, ‘can you check my car seat? It looks like it’s a really loose,’” she said. “Then you find out it’s not even in properly at all so the kid’s really unsafe. This came from a need or a desire from some people in the fire department and just the need from the public.”

Fire Chief Shane Phillips and Moeller were two of the seven in the class from Orange Beach’s department.

“Chief Phillips, when he was certified at previous fire department, but he let his certification lapse,” she said. “What I didn’t understand is you really have to be certified to be able to tell someone if their car seat is in right or not.”

And now with seven certified in the department, she wants those people to continue inspections and training to keep the certification current.

“We’re going to try to do a car seat inspection at least once every six months and do at these big events like the Kids Night Out where there’s already going to be a lot of people there,” Moeller said. “Maybe right before Christmas vacation right before people get ready to go out of town.

“We’re supposed to do so many every few years and get so many for recertification and I want to make sure the seven that came from Orange Beach, I want to make sure they get enough experience that they are very good with putting them in and inspections.”

A myriad of folks signed up for the class from two firefighters from Florida, a nurse, a physician’s assistant, a mom who operates a daycare and even an auto parts store worker.

“They sell the car seats and he wants to make sure he knows how to install them,” Moeller said. “There’s a mom here who runs like a home daycare and she’s wondering how to put it in for her children that come to her. It’s really a wide variety of people. I’m glad to see this much diversity.”

Moeller also offered a big thank you to Safe Kids Worldwide for conducting the class and providing all the props and materials and to Children’s Hospital for bringing the equipment to Orange Beach.

“They literally load up all their stuff in that van and bring it down here,” she said.