St John Fire Station opens doors to community

St John Fire Station opened its doors to the community on Tuesday as Fire Service Week continued with an open day featuring fire equipment demonstrations, basic health checks and giveaways.

Station Officer Angela Reveira said the Four Roads station wanted to make this year’s open day more engaging for the community.

“Every year we celebrate Fire Service Week and our theme this year is foresight, initiative, resilience, and engagement, which spells out FIRE,” she said.

“We have not been very active in terms of the open days, but this year we wanted to put a little more pizzazz on it in terms of having persons come and actually interact with the fire service on a larger scale.

“We do get visitors all during the year, but we think that this open day brings in a lot more persons, and they’re a lot more willing to stop and say hello.”

Visitors were able to view the station’s tenders and equipment, while firefighters also carried out demonstrations.

The open day also continued the health focus of an event held on Monday at the Cadogan, Mayers and Marshall Complex.

Basic vital checks, like blood pressure, were being offered at the St John station for a limited time to members of the public who may have missed that health event, Station Officer Reveira said.

“We are also offering some light refreshments, very light refreshments, and some giveaways,” she added.

Specially printed cups were also being distributed as tokens of appreciation “and they are stamped St John Fire Station”. ”  

Leading Fire Officer 251 Stevenson Rowe gave visitors an inside look at Water Tender Four, “one of the oldest type[s] of water tenders we have”, which carries 600 gallons of water and still contains emergency and rescue equipment used by firefighters.

He also highlighted equipment including hoses, extinguishers, rescue harnesses, ropes, webbings and a first aid kit.

The truck can accommodate about six personnel, although firefighters normally operate with four people per tender.

(LE)