When Matthew Lopez, a firefighter with Bay County (Fla.) Fire Rescue, saw a television commercial featuring people in wacky costumes trying to “fly” various human-powered crafts off a pier and plummeting into the water below, he knew he had to get a team together and try it.
The commercial was for an upcoming Red Bull Flugtag event, held in Tampa Bay on July 19. Red Bull holds Flugtag (German for Flying Day) competitions around the world, drawing huge crowds that enjoy the spectacle of teams launching homemade contraptions off a 30′ pier to see which team can fly the farthest before hitting the water below.
If You Build It …
He was at the fire station when he saw the commercial promoting the Tampa Bay Flugtag, Lopez recalls. “I turned to my partner and said, ‘We can do that.’ We looked up some of the videos on the Web, and then we knew we had to do it. Getting a team together was easy. When the next shift came on, we showed them the videos and that was that.”
The team, dubbed The Little Engine That Could, ultimately included Lopez (the team captain), pilot Dusty Neel, engineer Jay Petski and crewmembers Mark Savage, James Petski and Seth Imhoff. All except Imhoff are firefighters at Bay County Station No. 6. Imhoff works at Station No. 1, and ended up as an alternate team member because he was on standby to fight wildfires in California.
The team had to apply to enter Flugtag, including submitting a plan of their craft–a miniature fire engine. As soon as they were accepted, they started building the flying engine. The guidelines for Flugtag vehicles are not complicated: Entries must be handcrafted, no more than 30 feet wide and must weigh less than 450 lbs., including the pilot. “We picked the lightest guy to ‘fly’ it,” Lopez says. “We made it to be really strong but lightweight. It came out to be just under 150 pounds.”
Working on the Flugtag entry turned out to be tough. “Building it took three and a half long weeks,” Lopez says. “We promised the chief we’d do it on off-shift hours–but we all work different shifts, so the A-shift guys would do some work, then the B-shift guys would do some and then the C-shift guy, with the construction background, would look at it and say ‘This is all wrong’ and start over.”
Although The Little Engine That Could was branded as a Bay County Fire Rescue entry, the team members supplied all the work and money on their own. “We wanted to use the fire department logo and branding, and really wanted to get the name out there,” Lopez explains. “We’re basically a volunteer department that’s only been a career department for about 10 years, and a lot of people don’t recognize us.”
… 110,000 Will Come
An estimated 110,000 people showed up in Tampa Bay to watch 35 local teams compete in the Flugtag. After all the careful planning and preparation, how did the Little Engine do?
“We dropped like a rock,” Lopez admits. The firefighters’ engine flew just 21 feet. “But the score is based on appearance, showmanship, crowd participation and flight,” Lopez adds. “We definitely lacked in the flight category, but we made up for it in showmanship.” The firefighters enacted a crowd-pleasing scene to the song “Fire”: They set up a miniature house with a firefighter inside blasting carbon dioxide to look like smoke. Two firefighters walked up, pulled out the “victim,” and one gave him CPR compressions “Hollywood style,” while the other used an extinguisher to put out the fire. “We ended in a rousing rendition of the sprinkler,” Lopez says. The crowd went wild.
The Little Engine That Could (“which didn’t,” Lopez points out) took third place, winning a trophy and a cash prize they used to offset their expenses. The team dedicated the award to America’s fallen heroes.
To get the full effect of the ridiculousness of Flugtag, check out some of the many videos of events on YouTube. You can glimpse the Little Engine That Could in a promotional film on the Tampa Bay event at www.youtube.com/watch?v=439hEE5ynYM.
