Kids, Civilian and Career Courses! AWARDS, FOOD & FUN!

When: Sunday, May 4th

Where: Skagit Valley College Mount Vernon, WA

Time:

11:00 am - 11:30 am: Kids Competition (ages 8-15)

11:45 am - 1:00pm: Civilian Tower Competition (ages 16 & older)

1:00 pm - 2:30 pm: Career/volunteer Tower Competition

2:30 pm - 3:00 pm: Team Competitions(career/volunteer only)

Cost: $15 for entry, $30 with a T-shirt, pre-register for T-Shirt, Kids competiton is FREE.

Make checks payable to Cardinal Booster Club

Awards: Awards will be given to the top finisher overall both female and male. Top three finishers in each division, and overall team fire district.

E-mail: susan.deschenes@skagit.edu

Call: Susan Deschenes #360-416-7730

Download Registration Form

Download Waiver Form

Download MPEG Video Clip of Firefighters in Action

Career/Volunteer Division: 1:00 pm - 2:30pm

Run with hose 100feet, drop to one knee and pull hose 50 feet
Carry two buckets, 50 & 35 pounds each, 30 feet
Place ladder against building
Dummy drag 70 feet around a cone and back
Walk up two flight of stairs and pull hose up and back down over shoulder
Walk up another three flights of stairs, ring bell and walk down to ground floor
Go through a maze
Run around the track 300 meters

Civilian Division: 11:45 am - 1:00 pm

Same as Career except the following

no ladder *weights may vary
no maze

Non-competitive events

Children's House

Food/Drinks

Team Professional Competition: 2:30pm

Water Ball
Bucket Brigade
Hose Cart

WHAT A FIRE MUSTER IS ALL ABOUT

Most of those who have participated in firemen's musters to any extent have heard the standard definition of a muster as being a gathering of antique equipment for the purpose of competition.

But for most of those participants, musters mean something a little more.

Firemen's musters have come to mean lasting friendships between people and organizations who normally live and operate great distances from each other. Through the competition and camaraderie comes a mutual understanding, friendship and caring that few other activities seem to generate.

Being involved in musters means a willingness to loan another team a length of hose when one of theirs bursts or loaning them your hose cart for racing even though you have the fastest hose cart in competition.

It means being willing to run with another team when they are short a person, even though your team will run later and it means you may be tired from that first run.

Musters mean going to the barbeques and supporting the local sponsors, even though you may not care for the food being prepared. It can mean sharing an extra drink, or offering a meal to someone who has come to participate but may only have $10 to his name.

Participating in the musters means being able to establish a rapport with the others participating, being in friendly competition and helping out, being able to pull practical jokes without hurting someone; being able to go to the dance and having fun.

It can mean being able to call someone you know from another team and talking to them for endless hours about personal problems, with a willingness on their part to listen and try to help because they are your friends - friends that have come about because of the common thing you have shared at musters.

It also means establishing ties between teams and going out of your way to help another team such as the time a particular team sent a cash donation to a team to help them defray costs of their muster, or the time another team sent a cash donation to one team to help purchase a transport. It means helping out when help is needed, and being able to sit down and talk and joke about things afterwards.

Yes, musters are a gathering of antique equipment for the purpose of display and competition, but there is also much more to musters than the standard definition indicates.

Those of us across California, who have been fortunate enough to attend musters through the years have enjoyed that part of musters that is not in the standard definition, and have come to feel a part of the "muster family" and all that "muster" really means.

BUCKET BRIGADE

Known as the oldest form of firefighting. This is an event that takes skill and team work. The object of the event is to have a team of five men or women, each with a bucket. Working as a team, they have to move fifty gallons of water twenty feet, hand over hand, from a trough, known as a dip tank, to a smaller tank, known as a dump tank. The team that does this in the shortest amount of time is declared the winner.