Fill The Boot

Have you ever been stopped at a red light and noticed a bunch of firefighters standing at the intersection with an empty boot in one hand? Quite often its the local firefighters raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. This is the same charity that the Jerry Lewis telethon raises money for. Throughout the year, Firefighters Association have a "Fill the Boot" drive to raise funds for the MDA. Firefighters have raised 275 million dollars since 1954 for this worthy cause.

The K.B.F.P.D. had our "Fill the Boot" drive a few weeks ago. We are lucky at the K.B.F.P.D. in that our administration supports our efforts and allows some of to do this on duty, as long as we stay in an "available" status. Schmoe happened to be on duty during our drive, so we took the rig down to a local stoplight and went to work. As I have a tendency to terrify small children, I thought my efforts might be better spent documenting our actions.

Some guys really don't like standing on the corner asking for money, even if it is for a good cause. I don't mind, I kind of view it as training. Some day, the Saint That I Am Married To might wise up and throw me out. Then, being homeless, I will be forced to stand on the corner and ask for money. Practice like you play, that what I always say.

One of my knucklehead buddies saw me lurking with my camera. He thought he was being funny by pretending to lift his leg and pee on the hydrant. Little did he know that his image would be presented to millions of Report-On-Conditions readers.

I haven't heard the district wide total, but I am sure it was a significant amount. We didn't get to spend as much time on this as I would have liked, we ended up running a few calls in the time we were supposed to be there. Fortunately, there were quite a few off-duty guys there, so the fund raising continued.

I thought I would throw in a pic that Fredo snapped today while we were on a trailer fire. We got it knocked down pretty quick, but there was extensive overhaul as the trailer was full of wood chips and other hogged material.

We ended up using almost two tanks of water and had to call out public works to clean up the mess. You can see the back of my helmet in the lower right corner of the picture. My crew doesn't let me touch the nozzle any more. Something about Captains aren't supposed to have any fun.

I felt kind of bad for the trailer owner, he runs a small business doing vacant house clean-ups. It's going to cost him a few bucks to get his trailer roadworthy again, plus a few days of missed work. He was smart enough to unhitch his truck before the fire got going really good. Otherwise he would be out a truck as well.

Its been a long shift and I am done.

Thanks for reading,

Schmoe