MELFORT — To welcome their new fire truck, the Melfort and District Fire Department brought back an old tradition not practised in the city for more than 100 years.
The wet down ceremony took place Sept. 1 outside the fire hall.
“Fire departments since the 1800s have done a similar ceremony to welcome a new apparatus into the hall and into to the community. It’s not a common one in Canada,” said Jason Everitt, Melfort’s fire chief. “I’m a history buff and so when I researched the fire service history this came up, so I thought: what a cool way to bring the community together, bring the regional fire departments together and our firefighters, and welcome the new apparatus into the hall.”
The ceremony started with another fire department rolling in to steal the glory of the new fire truck from the home department – by washing it down. This way it is the other department’s hard sweat that went into it. A friendly “I beat you to it”.
This is followed by the home department pushing the truck back into the station, defeated. In this case the Melfort Fire Department had a bit of help through someone behind the wheel. This part of the tradition is due to horses being unable to push them backwards, when departments relied on horses to pull the apparatuses. This resulted in firefighters having to push it back in.
Everitt calls it a “good natured banter between departments” and something “that brought departments together”.
“What would typically happen when a new apparatus, or in those cases a horse-drawn carriage or a horse-drawn steamer, would arrive at the fire hall. A new piece of apparatus is a great source of pride for that department. So as sort of a dig, what they would do, the rival fire departments or the regional ones, would try to get in there first. One of the things the owner department would take great pride in is washing it the first time.”
Everitt hopes to make this ceremony a continuing Melfort Fire Department tradition.
“When a new piece of apparatus goes in, we’d like to go through this program,” Everitt said. “It’s a rare occasion for us to get together with the community and other departments and celebrate a new fire truck.”
The ceremony also had a prayer to ward off evil spirits from the fire truck, also another old tradition.
The truck
The new truck is a Steamer, with a lifespan of 20 years.
The Melfort and District Rural Firefighting Society purchased the truck for the department at a cost of more than $400,000.
“We provide service to five RMs so the fire truck that we had before, that Melfort owned, was outdated and beyond repair for what we needed. That’s when the decision was made to look for a new truck, and this is the end result of that, the year-long process.”
The former truck was purchased in 1994, outliving its 20-year lifespan.
“It lasted over the 20-year mark, so we were happy with that,” Everitt said. “The pumps wore out over time and it just through age and use it gets to the point where the cost to maintain it outweighed the cost to replace it.”