Kilbeggan fire crews educate and recruit at annual open day
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Fire Service personnel welcomed members of the community to the fire station in Kilbeggan for the annual open day on Saturday October 24 last.Image 2 of 15
Fire Service personnel gave demonstrations on safety throughout the open day.Image 3 of 15
Cletus Abhulimen, Pearl Hickey, Penny English, Millie English, Sophie Rabbitt, James Rabbitt, Christy Maloney and Michael Bohan.Image 4 of 15
Shay and Ciaran Byrne and Sharon and Oran Roche.Image 5 of 15
Michael Bohan, Shane Moran, Danielle Quintas, Kevin Fitzpatrick, Christy Maloney, Mal Guilfoyle, Stephen Heffernan, Station Officer, Clitus Abhulimen and Jacob Browne at Kilbeggan Fire Station for the open day on October 24.Image 6 of 15
Fire Service personnel welcomed members of the community to the fire station in Kilbeggan for the annual open day.Image 7 of 15
Civil Defence crews were on hand to give children CPR demos – Seamus, Dominion and Adam.Image 8 of 15
Roddy Corbett giving a talk on fire safety.Image 9 of 15
Roddy Corbett giving a demonstration.Image 10 of 15
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Fire safety demo were an important part of the day.Image 12 of 15
Danielle Quintas and Lucas PakenhamImage 13 of 15
Emma English and Penny, Linda Rabbitt and Millie.Image 14 of 15
Cletus Abhulimen, Pearl Hickey, Penny English, Millie English, Sophie Rabbitt, James Rabbitt, Christy Maloney and Michael Bohan.Image 15 of 15
Margaret McEvoy and Liam Bardon said recruitment for Civil Defence is in early December.Kilbeggan Fire Station and the Civil Defence Forces hosted a family friendly educational open day on Saturday October 24 with the hope of informing the community about the vital local service.
The day was full of activities concerning fire safety while simultaneously teaching the community the different services the fire station provides. From letting people know what types of fire extinguishers are for what types of fires to teaching children how fire trucks work; the day provided valuable learning opportunities for the whole family.
Station Officer at Kilbeggan Fire Station, Stephen Heffernan, said: “We like to have an open day every year just to let the people in the town see what we do.
“Everyone knows about the fire brigade, but they probably just assumed that we put out fires. But we do an awful lot more apart from just putting out fires.”
Attending to cardiac arrests, providing and installing smoke alarms are other services fire service personnel supply for the community.
Firefighters work in a retained capacity and have to be available at a moment’s notice due to the emergency nature of the job.
“A lot of people don’t realise that there’s no full-time fire service in Westmeath. We’re all retained. And when our pagers go off, we head to the station from our own jobs, or our own homes,” said Mr Heffernan.
Before the open day, Kilbeggan Fire Station was appealing for more people to join the station. Each station should have at least 12 members so they can work on the schedule of six people off, and six on call, each week. Since the success of the open day, Kilbeggan fire station can run on this system as they now have recruited enough staff.
Mr Heffernan concluded by saying: “Thank you to, anyone that turned up on the day. I’d like to thank the fire personnel within the station for their great efforts and their time. And I’d like to just thank Westmeath Fire Service in general for providing us with such good equipment. We’ve caught up an awful lot in the last 20 years. We’ve become a very professional service.”