A ten-year-old autistic boy’s challenge to visit every fire station in the UK comes to Shropshire on April 1.
Over four days Andrew Impey will visit all of the county’s 23 fire stations meeting firefighters and being given a VIP tour.
He arrives at Shrewsbury fire HQ at 9.30 on Friday, April 1, to be greeted by Chief Fire Officer John Redmond before a whistlestop tour of six more stations at Minsterley, Bishop’s Castle, Clun, Craven Arms, Ludlow and Church Stretton.
On April 2 he will see seven more fire stations including three in Telford at Stafford Park, Wellington and Tweedale, before going to Albrighton, Much Wenlock , Bridgnorth and Cleobury Mortimer.
The third day will see Andrew at Baschurch, Oswestry, Ellesmere, Wem and Hodnet and the fourth and final day of his grueling tour takes him to Newport, Market Drayton, Prees and Whitchurch before moving on to Cheshire fire stations.
Andrew hopes to raise hundreds of pounds for the Firefighters Charity and to raise awareness about autism. He started his tour of all 2,300 UK fire stations after an initial visit to Havant Fire Station in December 2014 from his home town of Portsmouth.
Since that first visit ,Andrew taught himself to read and write and set up his own Twitter account #oneladschallenge On his twitter account he is encouraging people to text £2 to the Firefighters Charity by texting OLCA99 to 70070.
On his journey, the year 5 pupil has also helped raise awareness about public fire safety and the work the fire service does in preventing fires and rescuing people in emergencies.
He has been on a fire and rescue boat, risen 100ft on an aerial platform, sat in an array of fire appliances, seen how specialist rescue equipment works, watched the education, community and prevention teams at work and joined firefighters during their charity car washes.
Shropshire’s Chief Fire Officer John Redmond said: “We are really looking forward to Andrew’s visit to our county and hope to make it a special one. He is certainly a very special boy.”
Ashley Brown, who co-ordinates Firefighter Charity events in Shropshire, added: “We are all looming forward to Andrew’s visit and the fundraising he is doing. We are pleased to say that one of the Shropshire stations will be the 600th fire station visited on his tour around the UK.
“People are welcome to come and support Andrew as he visits the stations and make donations into the bucket.”
Follow Andrew via Twitter #oneladschallenge where he writes about his challenge and his vastly improved social skills.
