Our emergency services people are a special bunch of people and there are aspects of their jobs that few of us would envy. Sometimes an incident will involve young children in need of comfort, so our Fire Service needs to carry soft toys for such occasions.
The Kaitoke Women's Institute recently
got their knitters together and created a large number of soft toy firemen, presenting them to Andrew Cotter, fire risk management officer at the Wanganui Fire Station last Friday.
Shirley Forward, Elizabeth Parr and Trish McMillan represented the Women's Institute at the informal presentation.
"We normally carry a couple of teddy bears on our trucks for if we go to a car accident or fire in which kids are involved," says Andrew. "It's just something to calm them down."
Shirley says she heard that the Waverley Women's Institute make soft toys for their fire service so it seemed like a good idea for Wanganui to pick up on.
Andrew says he's keen to see the "fireman dolls" handed out to comfort children in emergency situations.
"We'll make sure these go to some deserving people."
His job is fire safety education and in that role he is associated with a lot of community groups.
As well as local Women's Institute members, Elizabeth's sister and her friend in Greymouth helped with knitting the fireman dolls.
Trish is a prolific knitter and says she needs to have an outlet for her creativity. Knitting for the emergency services is ideal.
Shirley says the Women's Institute knitters are doing a similar thing for the St John people to carry on their ambulances.
