WBVFD Celebrates 25 Years of Firehouse Santa
When you hear the term “firehouse Santa”, most people envision Santa riding around on top of a fire engine waving to families eagerly awaiting a glimpse of the Big Man himself. Here at Woodland Beach Volunteer Fire Department, we take it a step further. Santa not only visits with everyone along the routes to hear the kid’s wishes and take photos, but he and his helpers collect gifts to donate to families in need of a little help providing toys for their kids.
Our Firehouse Santa adventure began with assisting Annapolis City with their program, very similar to ours. On December 9, 1997, Annapolis City units were committed to an ongoing 5 alarm fireground operation on Main Street in downtown Annapolis so Woodland Beach units stepped in to continue their toy drive. We continue to help them each year, returning the favor as they assist with ours. The schedule is the same each year with our event on the first Sunday in December and Annapolis City’s the following weekend.
Woodland Beach VFD Past Chief Bobby Howlin initiated our own Firehouse Santa in 1998 with one simple route through South River Colony and it steadily grew from there. Today, there are four routes with the largest route having 25 stops. All routes are performed simultaneously in one evening. Our most recent Firehouse Santa brought in just shy of 1,100 toys! In the earlier years, toys were distributed by the firehouse to families in the Edgewater area.
As the event grew, we partnered with the Anne Arundel County Food Bank for distribution throughout Anne Arundel County. It was with this partnership that we started collecting non-perishable food items and winter coats. Then, in the mid 2010’s, came the partnership with The Blue Ribbon Project. A local police detective had started a non-profit to help children in foster care and we wanted to help. During our toy drive, we announced that we were collecting new backpacks and items to fill them and the response was phenomenal! We delivered several backpacks to the Blue Ribbon’s founder at their first annual Chick Fil A fundraiser. And finally, came the partnership with Toys for Tots. Some changes were made at the food bank and they were no longer able to take the toys and coats that we collected so we had to choose a new avenue to deliver toys to families in need.
This is an “all hands on deck” operation that all of our department members participate in. We have multiple “chase vehicles” on each route that Santa’s helpers load the donated toys into. And then there’s the “home base” crew led by Melissa Bailey, that help unload the chase vehicles and then sort the toys by age and gender to make things more manageable.
We hope to continue this tradition for years to come as the torch is passed on to other members of our department. Chief Howlin started this program 25 years ago and has announced that 2023 was his final year as Firehouse Santa Director. It is with many thanks and deep gratitude that we honor his dedication to the program that we as a department and community look forward to each year.