Everyone’s invited to a Fire Safety Fun Night being planned by South Haven Area Emergency Services this week.
SHAES Director Brandon Hinz tells us the Thursday gathering will begin with a ceremony welcoming a freshly-manufactured tanker truck to the station, continuing a push-in tradition started in the early 19th century.
The Fun Night will run from 5 to 7 p.m. at the SHAES Blue Star Station, featuring fire-oriented activities for kids, free hotdogs and demonstrations by firefighters. Hinz says it’s a lot of fun that goes back more than two decades.
“Just games, activities, information,” Hinz said. “We’ll have signups for free smoke detector installations. It’s just a good time. Any school-age kids that have been through here in the last 20-plus years, they always leave with a smile on their face. And if you can educate folks and send them out of here happy, and hopefully they’ve learned something and had a good time while they’re doing it, that’s kind of what we aim for.”
Hinz says the push-in ceremony for the new truck goes back to the days when firefighters used equipment that had to be hand-pushed into the garage. When the first motorized fire engines were put into service in the early 19th century, firefighters continued to honor the push-in tradition, although they now simply walk alongside a new truck when it’s rolled into the station for the first time.
The new tanker being welcomed this week by SHAES will replace a 26-year-old tanker.
Kids in attendance for the Fire Safety Fun Night will get to be part of the push-in ceremony.
