Navy Firefighters are in the pink

Firefighters from Navy Region Northwest Fire and Emergency Services show off the pink shirts they wore all week in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Photo Courtesy of Kimberly Merrill

If you’ve seen members of Navy Region Northwest Fire and Emergency Services wearing pink shirts this week, your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you.

A total of 135 people in 11 stations within the region have been wearing pink T-shirts this week in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and to raise money for Susan G. Komen For the Cure. Station managers have been wearing pink ties.

“It’s not normal to see four firemen get out of a truck wearing pink shirts,” said firefighter Chris Hiteshew. “By now most people know what it means, though, and it usually prompts a brief discussion.”

The shirts feature a department logo with the familiar pink ribbon on the front, with the words “Brave enough to wear pink.” The back of the shirt reads “Working together to find a cure,” and features the word “fire” in blue, with the pink ribbon as the letter “i.”

Hiteshew said the departments have a contest to see who can outdo the others in their support of breast cancer research, saying some departments even wrap their fire trucks in pink to make them look as though they’ve been painted