Norwegian Fire Department
One dark night outside a small town in Wisconsin,
a fire started inside
the local chemical
plant and in a blink of an eye, it exploded into
massive flames. The alarm went out to all the fire departments for
miles around.
When the volunteer fire fighters appeared on the scene, the
chemical
company president rushed to the fire
chief and said, "All of our secret
formulas
are in the vault in the center of the plant. They must be
saved. I will give $50,000 to the fire department that brings
them out
intact."
But the roaring flames held the firefighters off.
Soon more fire departments had to be called in as
the situation became
desperate. As the
firemen arrived, the president shouted out that the
offer was now $100,000 to the fire department who could bring out
the
company's secret files.
From the distance, a lone siren was heard as
another fire truck came
into sight. It was
the nearby Norwegian rural township volunteer fire
company composed mainly of Norwegians over the age of 65. To
everyone's
amazement, that little run-down
fire engine roared right past all the
newer
sleek engines that were parked outside the plant.
Without even slowing down, it drove straight into the middle
of the
inferno. Outside, the other firemen
watched as the Norwegian old timers
jumped
off right in the middle of the fire fought it back on all sides.
It was a performance and effort never seen
before.
Within a short time, the Norske
old timers had extinguished the fire
and had
saved the secret formulas. The grateful chemical company president
announced that for such a superhuman feat he was
upping the reward to
$200,000, and walked
over to personally thank each of the brave fire fighters.
The local TV news reporter rushed in to capture the event on
film,
asking their chief, "What are you going
to do with all that money?"
"Vell," said
Ole Larsen, the 70-year-old fire chief, "Da first thing ve
gonna do is fix da brakes on dat focking
truck.