Our trip to the Fuquay-Varina Fire Department Open House
Back for the first time since 2019
This weekend was the Fuquay-Varina Fire Department’s open house. Held from 10 am to 3 pm at Fire Station No. 1, it promised a day of family fun. Our new nine-year-old expressed his desire to go, so we showed up around 11:30 to see the sights and check everything out. This was FVFD’s first open house since before COVID started.
There were inflatables and games and lessons about fire safety and trucks to check out. The coolest thing may have been this inflatable house (above) that had a kitchen and a living room and a window to climb out of that included signs that talked about fire safety for each room. At first a little nervous about climbing out the window, he went through the house several times before we left and the last time flying out the window at such speed that he flew right off the pad and landed on the ground to his surprise and to the fireman’s concern. But he’s nine, so he bounced right back.
It wasn’t just the fire department that had vehicles available to be checked out. The Fuquay-Varina Police Department had a cruiser there, the Wake County EMS had an ambulance, and the local American Legion outpost had an old military truck there as well.
My son is super curious about all the things and a couple weeks ago at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new fire station spent quite a bit of time talking to one of the firemen about the old original fire truck that the department had restored a few years ago. Today, he found a Lieutenant that was happy to explain all the knobs and switches and gauges and connections on the Ladder truck. And then when we went to the Rescue truck a few minutes later, he noted that many of the knobs and switches and gauges and connections were the same.
We definitely hit the right time of the day where there was a bit of a lull in foot traffic as we got to checking out the trucks, which really enabled him to take time and ask questions and get close attention.
But it wasn’t just trucks and inflatables. There were games. His favorite may have been they had a hand line set up where you could put out the “fire” in a wood house where you could knock down the “fire.” Another game he enjoyed was one where they had to pass a bucket of water down a line and back to fill up a jug.
Inside they had some fire safety stations set up. One seemed to include a VR experience, which I thought was pretty cool, though I didn’t get an opportunity to stop and check it out. And there were tables with some equipment on it that you could check out as well. As well as some swag for the kids like the plastic fire fighter hats, stickers, pencils, coloring books, etc. And Marshall and Rubble were there from the Paw Patrol, so how could you go wrong?
My wife is a former paramedic, and we are involved with the fire department, so we do interact a lot with them which might make us a little biased, but they are always so great and gracious with their time. The open house is no different. And it sounds like they are open to the public again for tours.
Now some pictures.
