Fill the Boot: $30K Collected By Huntington Fire Departments for Haiti

Members of the Huntington Fire Department, Huntington Community First Aid Squad and the Huntington Manor Fire Department fanned out to a dozen intersections Sunday, January 24, covering the town from Jericho Turnpike and Route 110 to  Main Street and Carver streets. Their mission: to collect money for Doctors Without Borders.

On a dreary, drizzly, cloudy morning, in their gear and armed with empty firefighter station boots, hundreds of members headed out with signs asking for donations from vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians.

Huntingtonians answered the call, and within four short hours the firefighters and EMTs raised just under $30,000 to send to Doctors Without Borders, according to Mary Beth Steenson Kraese, a member of Huntington Manor FD.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971, according to the group's web site.

MSF has been working in Haiti for 19 years, most recently operating three emergency hospitals in Port-au-Prince, and is mobilizing a large emergency response to the earthquake disaster.

"Our immediate response in the first hours following the disaster in Haiti was only possible because of private unrestricted donations from around the world received before the earthquake struck. We are currently reinforcing our teams on the ground in order to respond to the immediate medical needs and to assess the humanitarian needs that MSF will be addressing in the months ahead," the web site reads.