Hey! Have you seen the COOL NEW VIRAL WEB VIDEO!? It’s VIRAL!
Sorry y’all, but I couldn’t resist. I usually don’t post about these sort of things. I’ll watch them, enjoy them for a bit, and then let all of the other blogs and websites talk about them. Usually by the time I’ve seen something for the first time, Dave Statter or Fire Daily will have beaten me to it by at least a week or so and I’ll just look like I’m late to the party.
But this Cool New Viral Web Video?? It may be cooler than you might think. It might just be one of the coolest one of these videos I think I’ve seen.
The Cool New Viral Web Video I’m talking about comes to us from Rock County, Wisconsin. I live right near there and spend a lot of time in the county even though I don’t work there. I knew that they have a lot of good people working in the Fire, Law Enforcement, and EMS communities, but I didn’t know that a lot of them are pretty good dancers.
You should watch the video. It’s good by itself even without a back-story, but It’s really good when you look at it a little deeper.
Like most counties, Rock County, Wisconsin contains a number of different municipalities and townships with myriad different jurisdictions for law enforcement, fire protection, and EMS that are staffed by full-time paid, part-time paid, and volunteer professionals. What’s so cool about this video is that people from each of these different agencies showed up to make something great by working together. Even the 911 dispatchers are there. In fact, this whole thing was thought up by the county 911 Center director who was able to get the community behind the video and get different public safety people from different departments to all get together and choreograph something awesome.
Paid? Volunteer? Career? Big city? Small town? Dispatcher? Supervisor? Field provider? It doesn’t seem to matter in Rock County. They all get together and do cool things working side-by-side. Some people talk about the “Brotherhood” we share as public safety professionals. These people take their Brotherhood and go dance in the streets together while people from the community cheer them on.
And that’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time.
If a small town volunteer EMT can dance with the supervisor for the Big City police department and sing with the career firefighter next to a township volunteer firefighter and other Big City police supervisor while all being coordinated by the dispatchers from the county 911 center, then that’s what I call teamwork. It’s something we all should be so lucky to have in our personal and professional lives and the citizens of Rock County are all much better off for it.
Here’s the video. I’ll mention the communities I see below the link and the links to the news stories I’ve found that mention the video. If I miss something or someone, would you mind telling me in the comments? I want to make sure that I acknowledge everyone who helped make this awesome video possible. Oh, and could you all please share the video as well?
Hats off to these cool departments for their time and effort:
- Janesville, WI Police Department
- Beloit, WI Police Department
- Beloit, WI Fire Department
- Town of Beloit, WI Fire Department
- Rock County Sherriff’s Department
- Rock County 911
- Clinton, WI Police
- Clinton, WI EMS
- Evansville, WI Police
- Edgerton, WI Fire and EMS
- Milton, WI Fire and EMS
- Town of Milton, WI Police Department
- Beloit Memorial High School
- And Kathy Sukus, the Rock County 911 center director made extra sure that I acknowledged the cooperation and support provided by the businesses and community in Downtown Beloit, WI who put up with a bunch of public safety people dancing in the middle of the street on a Saturday afternoon including “Lucy #7 Burger Bar” who apparently has one heck of a dancing waitress.
Hats off to you all for being so cool. Nice job.
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This isn’t the only cool video that Rock County 911 has put out, their PSA to the public about their non-emergency number is pretty cool as well. Apparently they work with a local studio, Huml Media to get these done. It’s great, and catchy too.
