🚨🔥 BREAKING: RED BANDANAS STRIKE AGAIN! 🔥🚨

Huge congratulations to the Magnetawan Fire Station — aka The Red Bandana Bandits — for defending their title and winning the 2025 Southeast Almaguin Firefighters Challenge at this year’s Heritage Festival! 🏆💪 That’s two years in a row of bragging rights, backdrafts, and back-to-back wins!

Under the fearless leadership of Fire Chief Derek Young (who may or may not now insist on being called “Two-Time Champ”), the Magnetawan crew once again blazed past the competition — and didn’t even break a sweat (okay, maybe a little).

🔥 Props to the competition! You all brought the heat:
🥈 Burk’s Falls – Team Gold (came in swinging like it was the Firefighter Olympics — strong, shiny, and just a little too confident 😎)
💙 Kearney – Team Blue (drenched in determination — and maybe a bit of Gatorade — the comeback crew of the day 💪💦)
🟧 Perry – Team Orange (fueled by fire and maybe too many energy drinks — fast, furious, and slightly chaotic 🔥🧃)
💚 McMurrich/Monteith – Team Green (rolled in with good vibes, strong lungs, and the stealth of a forest ninja 🌲💨)

It was a showdown of strength, strategy, and slightly scorched egos — but all in good fun!

🎁 A HUGE thank you to:

• Circling Hawks for gifting a vintage metal firetruck décor piece to Fire Chief Derek Young — now proudly displayed somewhere between his desk and his ego 🚒😉
• Rickward’s Polaris for donating a generator to keep the champions powered up and ready for 2026 🔌⚡

To all the teams: You were smokin’ — but in the best way possible.
To the Red Bandanas: See you next year… maybe with targets on your backs. 😏

Every firefighter from all 5 participating departments received a custom-designed firefighter coin to commemorate this year’s challenge — a coin designed by Magnetawan Fire Station as part of their 2024 victory! A one-of-a-kind keepsake, just like the teams who earned it. 🪙🔥