Capital City Fire/Rescue will provide a fire engine on Friday evening for ol’ Saint Nick to ride through the Mendenhall Valley and hand out candy canes to children. This will be the second time this year that Santa Claus has done a pre-Christmas ride through part of the Capital City. He handed out candy canes to downtown Juneau and Douglas children last Friday.
“He’ll be on the truck. We’ll have the deck readied up with his reindeer and there’ll be lights, music, and the whole nine yards,” says Assistant Fire Chief Tod Chambers. “It’ll be one of the newer ladder trucks. Santa needs a lot of helpers. He needs the big truck.”
Santa Claus will start his ride at Gruening Park at 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 18 and eventually make his way through the valley to Back Loop Road.
Santa’s route
From Gruening Park, Santa and the fire truck will next stop in the Berner’s Avenue and Radcliff Road neighborhood. Next, he’ll hand out candy canes at Nancy Street and go up to Tongass Boulevard, Halloff Way, Stephen Richards Drive, then along Riverside Drive to Long Run Drive, Portage Boulevard, Aspen Avenue, and then to Mendenhall Boulevard.
From there, Santa will stop at Thunder Street and the Thunder Mountain Trailer Park, Ninnis Drive and Wolfram Way off of Back Loop, then to Arctic Circle and Slim Williams Way, and then Steelhead Street to Silver Street and Wren Drive.
See a map here.
Auke Bay Fire Station open house
Then on Saturday afternoon, the Auke Bay Fire Station will hold an open house which will include a Christmas story time and a visit by Santa.
Chambers says they usually have one to three firefighters living at the Auke Bay station. They participate in training, and clean and maintain equipment while waiting for a medical or fire call.
“It’s always good for the public to come in and see their fire station and where they are at. We need to keep that in mind that we have here and what we serve with. It belongs to the people and that’s why we do what we do,” Chambers says. “It’s just a good time to open it up and get some people to come on in.”
The Auke Bay Fire Station open house is 1 until 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec 19.
