Today the team attended our last GMFRS Fire Station Open day event of 2014, with the Open Day event at GMFRS Farnworth Community Fire Station.

We attended with our VW Crafter Incident Control Vehicle, our Ford Transit crewbus / Ambulance, and one of our four Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances.

We had operational team members Call Out Contact Mike Marsh, Training Officer Alistair Greenough, Equipment Officer – Medical Nigel Booth, Diane Blakeley, Matthew Hailwood, Steve O’Hara, Chris Tennant and Michael Wakerley present.

From our our Support Group we had Iain Clarkson and Dave Rees, with our end of year 2nd hand books ‘bundles’ available at whatever donations visitors wished to make, plus our Christmas Card sales.

Also present were probationers Heath Doran, Carole Truman and Neil Haigh attended to see how the team presents itself at ‘public display’ events.

GMFRS Community Fire Station had all their based Fire Appliances on display, including a Pump, Incident Support Unit and a Foam Unit.

The GMFRS Water Incident Unit from Eccles Community Fire Station, GMFRS Fire Dog Handler Mick Dewar and his USAR / Accelerant Dogs, GMFRS Technical Rescue Unit and their Appliance, the Dennis Metz vintage turntable appliance from Greater Manchester Fire Museum, and an operational Ladder Platform Appliance (Simon Snorkel) from GMFRS Bolton Central Community Fire Station ; which gave ‘rides’ in the basket to members of the public visiting, were also present.

Also giving ‘rides’ to the younger visitors to today, was the children’s ‘Mini’ Fire Engine, complete with child seats, working sirens and blue lights (Lots of envious parents and grand parents wished they were small enough to fit in this !)

The usual ‘disco’ Fire Engine was present, this time blowing out lots of very small foam bubbles, resembling snow in the air and on the ground – very festive.

Side shows, GMFRS Fire Cadets and RTC extrication demonstrations completed the days activities.

Donations from the many kind visitors to our display today raised £47.70p including donations for our 2nd hand books, and £33.00 from Christmas Card sales.

We are very grateful to all who contributed to the team, to raise this great amount of £80.70p and to everybody who stopped by ouir display to enquire about the work of the team.

At 15.14hrs this afternoon, during our attendance at this Open Day, we were called out by GMP regards a search operation – our Incident 95, and so the team members present departed prior to the 16.00hrs Open Day finish.