Banning of volunteer firefighters’ Christmas lolly run water fights is a gross bureaucratic overreaction

Surely whichever Department of Fire and Emergency Services staffer wrote THAT email in late December could have stopped for a moment to think about all the more important issues they could have been dealing with at that point. But no, instead they decided the most important thing they could do at that time was tell a group people who give up their own time for free to protect lives and homes that they cannot go around making their community a better place at Christmas time. It sings from the same ridiculous playbook WaterCorp used last year when they told Pilbara folk they weren’t allowed to swim in popular waterholes despite being able to produce zero evidence of any genuine issues arising from it. Water fights are the epitome of family fun and have been a staple of this beautiful yet hot corner of the world we live in for as long as fire trucks have been around. You always know Christmas is around the corner in the north because families all over the place start posting questions asking when the lolly run is coming to their street. It is without question the most anticipated event of the festive season and offers a chance like no other for volunteer fireys, children and families to let off a bit of steam with a good ol’ fashioned water fight. For the firefighters it is an opportunity like no other to engage with the community and plant the volunteering seed in the minds of our little future heroes. For kids these water fights are an exciting opportunity to pit their supersoakers and waterbombs (and big kids with hoses) against the big red trucks manned by the undisputed kings and queens of the arena — the fireys. The police in Wickham love the idea so much they got involved themselves last year. And its popularity is obvious — a video posted of the Wickham police and volunteer fireys under siege from all sides in an epic pre-Christmas water fight went viral last year and drew almost universal admiration for both professions from millions of people around the world, many of who were wishing their community could do the same. That is the kind of publicity an organisation would spend huge sums of money trying to attract, but volunteer firefighters did it for free because they love the communities they live in. But no, we can’t have that according to a government bureaucrat. They used that all encompassing “health risks” claim to say it can no longer go ahead, but provided no evidence of this ever being an issue. So thank you anonymous DFES bureaucrat for sucking more fun out of the world. We hope you are happy with yourself, because thousands of children and families are not. I am sure the good folk of the North West will do what is right and make this year’s water fight even more epic than the last.