More than 100 people turned up at Mansons Hall on Friday, December 15, for Cortes Island’s first firefighters dinner. 

“It was wonderful to be able to thank the firefighters and their families and their close friends for all the time and effort that they put in. I think we have an amazing crew and it’s really something as chief, and the board, we need to be mindful of and make sure it’s an amazing place for them to participate. A lot of small fire departments are really struggling with staff these days. We have a really strong crew,” explained Fire Chief Eli McKenty.

“We invited all the firefighters, the board, the paramedic crew and everyone’s families to a dinner. The turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and all that good stuff were catered by Carie Taylor from the Sunflower Food Truck. Kirsten Vitelich, and I don’t know Amy’s last name, (she’s relatively new at Linnaea Farm), did the on scene catering. Then all the firefighters and everybody brought a mountain of sides and desserts. It went super well, and  was a tremendous amount of fun for everyone.”

CC: How many people came? 

Eli McKenty: “I think we were 105-110, including well over half of our membership and their families.”

“It was a little bit stressful leading up to it, since we haven’t had one before. The week before, we had ended up with a lot of late RSVPs and we jumped from expecting about 80 people to expecting over 100 and  weren’t sure we were going to have enough food. I made a panic buying trip to Costco and ended up getting a mountain of food that we prepared.  We also were able to increase the amount that Carie was bringing. We still weren’t totally sure, but then people delivered like I’ve never seen in the potluck department!”  

“All my worrying was unnecessary as usual. Every time we’ve had a barbecue or potluck, I’ve been concerned about whether there was going to be enough food to go around and it always turns out to be way more than we need.”

“It went super well, and  was a tremendous amount of fun for everyone.”

“I could never have pulled this off without Tammy Allwork, our Office Manager. I basically was like, ‘hey, let’s do this. Uh, now what?’ She was instrumental, as were several other volunteers from the fire fighting community who stepped up. Tammy took care of  a huge amount of organizing around the food. Jeramie Ellingson organized the music,  Lucy Robinson organized photography and Robert Carrington set up a hilarious selfie booth in the hallway.  Michael Datura, the new principal from the school, DJ’d for us, which was well appreciated by everyone. As was the background music that Michael Keith played during the dinner.”  

CC: Did your President, Sadhu Johnston, make a speech? 

Eli McKenty: “Sadhu gave quite a nice speech. The speeches were thanking the firefighters and their families for supporting us and the board and the community. They detailed some of our achievements for the year,  thanking Mac for taking the training officer role. There were a few statistics. I think we’ve done 82 calls this year.”

“We had awards for firefighters, and gave away some door prizes. Then we had a couple of hilarious competitions.” 

“We thought it’d be fun to have a few firefighter themed competitions and a number of people had nominated Sadhu as somebody who ought to participate in one of these. So we had Sadhu and one of the firefighters, and then myself and another firefighter assisting them, get into the structural turnout gear and breathing apparatus as quickly as possible.” 

CC: Who won? 

Eli McKenty: “Technically Sadhu, but it may not have been an entirely level playing field.” 

CC: What does that mean?  

Eli McKenty: “I might have helped him a little bit more than was originally planned. The original idea was that the firefighter and the board member were going to be entirely on their own steam getting into it, but I figured that was a little bit steep so I decided I’d help Sadhu out a bit.  Things  got a little bit excited, and I ended up stuffing him into his suit as fast as I could, and one of the other firefighters was stuffing our other firefighter into their suit as fast as possible, but they didn’t realize at the beginning that it was a full two person operation, so Sadhu and I had a little bit of a head start. Sadhu did decline to accept the prize, which was generous of him, given the circumstances.” 

“We also had a knot tying competition where a bunch of the firefighters and a few of the guests practice tying all of our standard firefighting knots and competed to be first to finish.” 

Sadhu, Jess and firefighters helped with the set up and tear down.

The Firefighters Dinner is expected to become an annual event on Cortes Island  

Top image credit: The first Cortes Island firefighter’s dinner

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