Brindlee Collects Fire Department Patches
What started as a small bulletin board has turned into a wall plastered with cork and filled with colorful patches.
During our years in business, we have been able to trade patches with Fire Departments all over the United States and other countries.
When a new employee or visitor walks through our facilities for the first time, the tour often comes to a stop at the wall of patches. The variety of these patches piques most people's curiosity, from fire industry veterans to the youngest child.
Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus is not a fire department, but many of our employees are trained firefighters and volunteer with the local volunteer fire department on Brindlee Mountain. The patch we trade is a special one created for Engine 4, the Dayside Engine, of Brindlee Mountain Volunteer Fire Department, whose home is on our campus.
We are not the only organization or people to collect these unique patches.
FDNY Collects Patches 
Right after 9-11, the Fire Department of New York was encouraged to start a collection. One person's suggestion has grown to over 3000 patches from across the world.
"These are places far away that have fire departments, and the patch shows us that they've been here, they've visited us," said Ned Coulter, an educator at the FDNY Fire Zone, New York City's state-of-the-art fire-safety learning center. "They do the same things in Murmansk and Bangkok that we do here."
Buinness Book of World Records for Patch Collecting
One man has taken collecting Fire Department patches to an extreme that has granted him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Bob Brooks, Deputy Fire Marshal with Albany Fire Department, received notification that he had successfully set the new Guinness World Record title for the Largest Collection of Fireman's Patches. "His 8,158 patches were on display and officially counted, which exceeded the previous record of 4,513 patches collected by a firefighter in Madrid, Spain."
Let's Trade 
The collection on Brindlee Mountain is nothing in size compared to those mentioned above, but it does continue to grow.
We enjoy the opportunity to display the patches of other Fire Departments, and we are willing to trade the Bayside Engine patch.
If you or your department would like a Dayside Engine patch, just mail one from your department to us, and we will return a Dayside Engine 4 patch.
Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus
15410 US Highway 231
Union Grove, Alabama 35175
Patches are a great reminder that people worldwide work in the same capacity to protect and serve their communities.
