{"id":469401,"date":"2026-10-18T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T05:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/469401\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T05:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T05:00:12","slug":"el-paso-fire-department-hosts-5th-annual-fire-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/469401\/","title":{"rendered":"El Paso Fire Department hosts 5th Annual Fire Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — The El Paso Fire Department is hosting its free, family-friendly event, Fire Fest, on Saturday, October 17.<\/p>\n

The 5th annual event will be hosted at Veterans Park from 12 p.m. until 6 p.m., located at 5301 Salem Dr.<\/p>\n

\"\"A line forms as attendees gather for a chance to take a closer look at El Paso Fire Department’s FireSTAR helicopter. KVIA\/Fire Fest 2025<\/p>\n

The department says attendees can expect an afternoon packed with activities, firefighter competitions, helicopter landing, food trucks, mascots, and more.<\/p>\n

Firetrucks are lined up on the pavement where the parking lot usually would be just as the booths line the grass. <\/p>\n

The space between the firetrucks is filled with people talking to the teams about their equipment on display, even being able to handle it and try on what’s wearable if they wished but the biggest lines were the children in line to spray a model car along it’s track with a firehose as well as to get into one of the fire engines. <\/p>\n

An experience meant for everyone who comes but especially on the next generation to potentially influence them to one day join is one of the primary reasons El Paso Fire Department Battalion Chief Kris Menendez said the event is meant for. <\/p>\n

“That’s our future, so to give them the opportunity to see that, hey, I want to be a fireman. I want to be part of a special team, that’s why we do these things,” Menendez said. “So it’s pretty amazing that we have that effect on the kiddos from the smallest 2 or 3 year olds to the biggest adults.”<\/p>\n

Menendez said it was not just fire engines at the event, with other vehicles including aerial trucks and brush trucks for wildland fires in addition to teams from the fire department’s hazmat, water rescue, and search and rescue divisions.<\/p>\n

\"\"Attendees get a closer look at fire engines from EPFD. KVIA\/Fire Fest 2025<\/p>\n

One of the attendees, Nataly Meza, said she enjoyed coming because in addition to the activities for her kids there was also a lot of information available as Menendez explained the event is also meant to be educational for people about what each team does which is why their stations had their equipment on display for people to see and interact with.<\/p>\n

It was the community outreach by EPFD that Meza appreciated though. <\/p>\n

“I think it’s great. I mean, there’s so many things and programs that I wasn’t aware about, and I think it’s great what they’re doing and reaching out and connecting people,” Meza said.<\/p>\n

The effort to organize an event like this was what Camila Lugo, another attendee, said she liked most about coming to Fire Fest which she believed showed the mutual support between the community and the Fire Department. <\/p>\n

“It’s great knowing that there’s so many fire departments out here keeping us safe, and them knowing that we’re supporting them as well as them supporting us,” Lugo said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — The El Paso Fire Department is hosting its free, family-friendly event, Fire Fest,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[137339,138,140,139,137341],"class_list":["post-469401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-abc-7","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-kvia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}