Visit to the Fire Station

By Jeff: With Laurel away for a business school girls' reuinion weekend, I was home alone with the kids. Saturday morning, we went to a pancake breakfast at the Menlo Park fire station down the street. Afterward, we got to check out some very cool stuff. Julia got to "drive" a real fire truck as well as sit in back and talk on the radio. We also saw some demos of firefighting and search and rescue techniques, the highlight of which was the firemen rappelling down a practice building.*









* For anyone who's interested, the Menlo Park Dire Department manages CA-TF3, one of 28 FEMA-coordinated Urban Search and Rescue teams spread across the country. The Menlo Park task force has responded to a number of notable emergencies, including Hurricane Katrina, the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster.