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Buckland Fire fundraiser serves up success

May 1, 2011 | 3:52 PM

A lobster dinner, silent auction and a dance – it’s not hard to see why the Buckland Fire and Rescue’s second annual surf and turf fundraiser dinner and dance packed the main hall at the PA Exhibition Centre.

The event raises money for rescue equipment used by the two dozen volunteer firefighters in the co-operative.

Fire chief Jim Miller said, specifically the money “is for our rescue boat, our ice rescue suits. We had to change our radio program so its $42 a month for each radio that we have to come up with. So we’re raising money for that.”

Deputy fire chief Ward Howat said they’re fundraising efforts are ongoing all year.

“It’s also an ongoing cost in order to do training, to buy bigger and better equipment and whatever has to go along with any of that technical rescue,” he said.

With all the various aspects of the event they won’t know exactly how much was raised for a while, Miller said.

“If we could make something in the neighborhood of $10,000 dollars we’ll be pretty happy,” he said.

In the two years the fundraiser has run, there has been such a showing of support that organizers are starting to think of expanding it to two nights.

“This is the second year that we’ve done it and we were sold out really quickly with the amount of people we had here this year and lots of people still looking for tickets, so I guess if there is any way we can pull it off we’ll sure look forward to try and do that,” Howat said.

sfroese@panow.com