How firefighters celebrated Thanksgiving while on the job

MEDFORD, Or.- Many people are staying home with their families today but not everyone has that luxury. Firefighters in Medford are figuring out how to celebrate Thanksgiving while away from their loved ones.

According to Kevin Watt with the Medford Fire Department, most holidays at the fire station aren’t that different from a normal day on the job. But they still make plenty of time to relax.

“Our crews are eating when they can, they’re still running all the calls they normally would go to, but they’re allowed to watch football during the day and stuff that we are normally too busy to do. So it’s a little more relaxed,” Watt said.

Watt says COVID-19 means their families can’t even visit the station but, like many others today, they are making it work.

“One of the firefighters here was telling me he was on Zoom and they had like seventeen kids yelling in the background. Its fun,” he said. And there’s still plenty of turkey to go around.

“Most of the guys will come in with their own turkeys and those take all day. A lot of them like to smoke them so a lot of them have them in little trays out smoking now,” Watt explained.

For new firefighter Adam Hindy, this is his first thanksgiving spent working.

“It’s different being away from family and not having my family here and getting to spend it with them,” said Hindy. But he says the fire fighting crew can sometimes feel like relatives all the same.

“That makes it nice being here with the people you work with on a daily basis. I mean it does seem more like a family,” he said.

And, at the end of the day, he’s focused on the most important things.

“Kind of doing a traditional thanksgiving dinner. We’re smoking a turkey and making all the different fixings and everything to go with it,” Hindy explained.

The fire department wants to remind everyone to be careful during the holiday season, as they frequently deal with kitchen fires and fires caused by Christmas trees.