Hundreds of backpacks were available for students at Community Day.
Photo by Steve Ranson.
Volunteers gave away school supplies and helpful information during Saturday’s 13th annual Community Day at the Rafter 3C arena.
“We thank all our partners for participating again this year,” said Shannon Ernst, director of Churchill County Social Services. “We could not do this without them.”
While waiting for the event to begin, a few children were already cooling off under the sprinklers provided by the Fallon/Churchill Volunteer Fire Department in the side parking lot. Sheriff and police officers also were onsite and emergency medical technicians from Banner Churchill Community Hospital parked an ambulance in the shade of the overhang outside. The EMTs said they like to participate in events like Community Day so younger children can see the ambulance up close and will hopefully feel calmer about seeing it in any future emergency.
Brittany Burton, office specialist with Social Services, said the county department wanted to hand out supplies to at least 700 students, but she felt they would be surpassing that. She noticed that the line of waiting families normally follows along the side of the building, but it had extended this year past the end of the building and curved well into the parking lot toward Sheckler Road.
Doors opened directly to four tables stacked high with backpacks ready to load with the collected items. Community organizations including United Methodist Church, Churchill County School District, Mason’s Lodge, 4-H and New Frontier Treatment Center handed out a large variety of school supplies including lunchboxes, kid-safe scissors, boxes of Crayola crayons and colored pencils, dry erase markers, glue sticks, earbuds and regular headphones.
Central Nevada Health District provided back-to-school vaccines. REMSA Health distributed information about car seat safety from zerofatalitiesnv.com and gave away booster seats. Children could measure to see if they were shorter than the minimum height of 57 inches and still needed to sit in a booster seat in the car.
Free hotdogs, chips and bottled water were available throughout the morning sponsored by New Frontier Treatment Center. Some children in line also were excited about jumping in the bounce house sponsored by Louie’s Home Center.