ok so on saturday we had two christmas parades in the area. one in the city (shelbyville) and one in our little town (Bagdad). it was about 15 degrees all day and snowing hard. the junior firefighters had a float and the firefighters had a float both of which looked amazing (hope to put pictures up soon.) Well the first parade went off perfectly other than our head adviser having the flu and everyone getting mild frostbite. Basically we froze our tails off.

Well then after cleaning up the station when we got back and setting up the trolley rides through bagdad we all got on the top of the firetruck instead of riding in a pickup. This firefighter who had done very little to contribute to either float suddenly decided he would show up and wanted to help. Since our adviser was sick as he could be, they told this guy to drive our truck (he had all licenses needed).

We got into position for the parade and were loading ppl off the truck to get on the float. Now picture 20 people on a hose bed cold and huddled up and trying to get about 3 ppl off who for some odd reason chose to sit in the back... It was mostly jr firefighters but some of the firemans kids were up there with us, these kids were 3 and 8 years old. The 8 yr old was sitting on our jr. presidents lap and the 3 yr old securely in his cousins arms (cousin is our jr. captain).

The guy driving the truck decided it would be a good time to start messing with the clutch and suddenly the truck lurched forward as ppl were getting off. A shorter jr firefighter was being helped off the back when this happened and fell onto another jr who caught her but fell off onto his back bruising it really bad. The little 8 yr old was basically thrown off but caught, he scraped his hand and cried for the longest time.... this made his little brother freak when he saw blood and he started crying... several people were also standing up when he did this and were able to catch themselves on other members... So now we have several injured jr firefighters and two injured small children

The driver flat out told us he thought it would just be something funny to scare us... not an accident or anything. Now obviously some ppl were very mad about this but nothing was done...

wat would ur dept. do if something like this happened? I was so mad bc those are the sweetest little kids around and it broke my heart to see them cry. We finished the parade and were ok when we got back to the station but everyone was mad... the driver laughed...