Derek Beck/North Platte Post
NORTH PLATTE, Neb - Over 36,000 individual bottles of drinking water were collected by 2 North Platte businessmen over the course of 3 weeks. That's nearly 18 pallets with close to 84 cases of water on each of them. What started as a friendly competition between friends to collect water for local rural fire departments before the summer wildfire season began, became a huge event and concluded Wednesday afternoon when all the water was delivered to North Platte Fire Station 1. Agri-Affiliates' Chase Dodson and Jordan Boston, State Farm Insurance came up with the idea in early April, by early May they were already collecting donations, by the pallet.
North Platte Fire Chief Dennis Thompson said "this water is life sustaining for our firefighters out on these wildfires. It's critical that we keep them hydrated." Thompson told the POST that the water pallets will be distributed amongst 12 departments that have a mutual-aide agreement with each other including Hershey, Maxwell, Wallace, Tryon, Sutherland, Curtis, Stapleton and others.
Many local businesses joined the effort with donations including: Ag Valley Coop, Title Services of The Plains, HD Management, Family Hearing Specialists, Kohler Trailer Sales, TD Angus, Dodson Land Management, Fortify Group, North Platte Stockyards, Mark and Shelly Miller, Shay and Lindy Miller, Ruth and Gary Stearns, Agri-Affiliates, Sargent Irrigation, Olson Farms, Norder Supply, Arnold Insurance Agency, Culligan Water and many others that showed up and donated cases of water. Gary's Super Foods helped by discounting pallets of water for this event.
In the end Chase Dodson did collect a few more bottles of water than Jordan Boston, but who's counting? Boston will be dunked in a dunk tank on June 2nd at the 5th anniversary of his State Farm business.