Last week in Raleigh at the Convention Center the South Atlantic Fire Rescue Expo 2014 was held. It was my first time attending and besides a large variety of educational classes and extracurricular activities, which I missed, I did manage to drop in on a few events.
For those of us not in the firefighting world the expo exhibits on the big floor would up falling into a few different varieties; air equipment, clothes, trucks, miscellaneous.
And in that miscellaneous category I’d have to add men in skirts. While I was there, they bagpipes came out to play with themselves.
You can see some of the raw footage of that event below.
Saturday was filled with a fire apparatus parade, an exhibit using the 1905 Raleigh Steamer Engine, some firefighter recruit competitions, and a bit of good barbecue.
The parade came first. More on that can be found here and in the video below.
The exhibition of the 1905 steam powered fire engine was very cool. Mike Legeros gave an excellent presentation of the history of the engine.
A fire was built in the engine and a demonstration given on how the old engine has still got the power to pump water.
Once the engine was finally up and powerfully pumping water, some of the guys in attendance took advantage of the cool water.
Following the steamer demonstration there were some fun firefighter competitions among the recruits in the latest Raleigh firefighter class.
The next competition was a team of four where three of the recruits could not see and the fourth team member had to stand in a kiddie pool and direct the three with the hose to hit them in the chest and let the water fall into the pool.
Members of the Stony Hill Fire Department judged the show while Bay Leaf Fire Department members helped with the water.
Finally there was a bucket competition where teams of four had to fill buckets of water, run across a parking lot, and throw them onto a roof to try to fill a barrel at the end of the downspout.
Overall it looked like the expo was a big success.