PICTURES: Buckie firefighters smash festive charity collection record for third year in a row
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
BUCKIE's on-call firefighters have smashed their Christmas charity street collection record for an amazing third year in a row.
In the run-up to Christmas the team gave up their time to help Santa out raising money round Buckie, Findochty, Portessie and Portgordon, as well as a couple of stints at the town's Tesco store. The Man in Red swapped his traditional sleigh for a festively-decorated fire appliance.
While the area, along with the rest of the country, is suffering the effects of the cost of living crisis and high utility prices, it certainly did not deter local communities selflessly digging deep to help those in need. In all a sum of £8209 was collected, which tops the previous year's record of £8060 giving the firefighters a hat-trick of records.
This latter total smashed the previous best of £7331.68 set during Christmas 2021.
One of those delighted was Buckie fire station Watch Commander Colin Forbes.
He said: "We're absolutely delighted to break our record again, especially given the cost of living crisis which has been affecting us all.
"It was really good to see people supporting the charity collection so generously, we're very, very grateful for the continued backing we've had from the community.
"We'd also like to thank Buckie Tesco for allowing us to do a couple of collection sessions up at the store. We did really well over our two weekends there and to be allowed to do it was a huge boost.
"We were fortunate with the weather during the collection, which was generally pretty good for the time of year. While we were called away a couple of times, we managed to change our collections routes to accommodate this."
Watch Commander Forbes went on to say that the majority of the cash raised would be split between the Firefighters' Charity and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Families Trust, with the rest being divided among local charities and good causes over the course of the coming year.
He added: "We'd love to hear from local groups who think they could benefit from some of the money we've raised.
"They can get in touch by PM-ing us through the fire station Facebook page, pop along to the station during one of our training nights every Monday from 6.45pm or drop us a note."
The station's address is East Cathcart Street, Buckie, AB56 1PJ.
The Firefighters’ Charity provides confidential, personalised support to the whole of the fire services community, delivering mental health, physical health and social wellbeing services at their centres, remotely, online and in communities around the UK.
For more information on the work of the charity, visit their website at https://www.firefighterscharity.org.uk/
Established 1923, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Families Trust is the oldest fire and rescue charity in the UK. It provides a wide range of support to the whole Scottish Fire and Rescue Service family, both uniformed and non-uniformed. Learn more at https://sfrs-familysupport.org.uk/
BLOB Visit www.grampianonline.co.uk for more pictures.
