Hope Heritage Festival Firehouse Show Down - September 12, 2009
Wanting to have fun and show the community what they need to know and do when a fire breaks out, the Hope and White City Volunteer Fire Departments took part in a competition on Saturday at the Hope Fall Festival.
During the Firehouse Showdown there were four different areas in which the two departments had to compete. The areas included an air pack relay, a five gallon bucket fill, an obstacle course and the weighted sled pull.
"We use everything we did today on a regular basis," said Tracy Schmidt, White City fire chief. "Doing events like this helps us to tighten up our skills."
During the air pack relay, teams competed to see how quickly they could put their equipment on, and then they also had to see how accurate they were at throwing water from a bucket into a tank during the five gallon bucket fill. They also had to crawl through a crawl space, pull a weighted sled and run with their equipment on during the competition.
White City and Hope each had two teams in the event, with White City team one taking first, Hope team one taking second, White City team two taking third and Hope team two taking fourth. Tri-County Telephone hosted the event and awarded a total of $700 to the top three teams.
The two departments said they learned a lot from each other when they got together before the event and were able to see what equipment the other department had and what the other department is doing that works.
"We've learned a lot from each other," Coup said. "It was fun to get together with them but it's also nice to know them when we have to work together."
“We had a blast and everyone really enjoyed it,” Schmidt said. “If there is one next year, you can count us in. We would challenge more departments to show up next year.”
