The Penhold Firefighters took all the necessary precautions to protect themselves from COVID-19 this weekend when they played a game of charity hockey against the Bowden Correction Officers at the Penhold Multiplex.

Penhold Fire Chief Jim Pendergast says they made sure not to take any chances.

“We felt that if we follow provincial guidelines and protocols, and made sure that we could maintain social distancing. We had our medical crew there with all of our protocols in place for responding to these types of incidents we should be good to go.”

Pendergast says he's assuming that some charities are going to be hit hard by the lockdown, so it's important that we help out when we can.

“There’s a lot of concern out there, and there are a lot of people that are either laid off from work or not able to go to work and not receiving paycheques, so I would anticipate that their demand is going up so that’s why we felt it was important to do it.”

Pendergast says they made sure to follow all the provincial guidelines to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, including social spacing, not sharing water bottles, hand sanitizers and medical teams on-site, and ensuring that less than 250 people were in the building at any given time.

In total, they managed to bring in about 30 milk crates worth of food, and about $265 in cash donations to the Red Deer Food Bank.

Photo courtesy of Jim Pendergast.