Walt Disney World was awesome.

OK, maybe “hilarious” is the word. Whatever the case, cast publications in the early years included pictures like this:

"Don Poole instructs Sylvia Tait (right) and Willie Willis on how to use a fire hose at Orange Vista Hospital."

Walt Disney Productions was pretty excited that they suddenly had their own World. All these new services and divisions – they were running a real live city. They even had a fire department – the Reedy Creek Improvement District Fire Department had grown in five years from seven men and one antique fire truck at its inception in 1968 to seventy-one firefighters and officers as well as “two 1250-gallon per minute pumps, 2 wood trucks, one 1250-gallon tanker, one rescue vehicle, three ambulances, two station wagons for transporting sick or injured guests and employees, two vehicles for investigations and inspections and three emergency service vehicles.”

To illustrate this fact, the above picture was published in the October 13, 1973 edition of Eyes and Ears of Walt Disney World. That’s the fire chief Don Poole on the right. And now you know.

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