An estimated 1,000 friends, neighbors and community residents turned out for the Lower Macungie Fire Department’s community day activities recently at the Sauerkraut Lane fire station, adjacent to the Willow Lane Elementary School campus.

“We are very pleased with the number of people who came to enjoy our open house,” Andrew Miller, a firefighter and the event’s lead planner, said. “It has been pretty steady at about a thousand participants for the past several years.”

Attendees came to see the firefighting equipment, watch demonstrations of rescue techniques, play games, interact with vendors and to enjoy the free picnic fare food provided by the fire company.

The community day activities have been held at the Sauerkraut Lane facility since it opened in 2010, Miller said, to facilitate parking and safe road access. Prior, it was held at the department’s Brookside Road station.

A Lehigh Valley Hospital Medevac helicopter had been scheduled to land at the event, but marginal weather prevented the helicopter’s flight. Instead, aerial ladder trucks from Lower Macungie Fire Department and Trexlertown’s Goodwill Fire Department demonstrated the tremendous water pumping capability of the aerial equipment.

Twenty-four hours later the two aerial ladder pumpers were called to join three other aerial trucks from other area fire stations to fight a windswept apartment building fire in Upper Macungie Township.