The Okotoks Fire Department is apologizing to residents after a few difficulties during the Christmas Eve Parade left some families disappointed.

According to Ken Thevenot, Okotoks Fire Chief they feel the parade was a success, although they had to deviate from the original route due to a few mishaps.

He says a few neighbourhoods were missed was because of a number of issues.

"The temperature was cold that night so we had to check on Santa and Sparky a few times to make sure they were okay," he explains. "We also had to travel a bit slower because of some of the ruts on the roads, they were frozen at that time, with our older truck with Santa and Sparky up there you don't want them thrown around on top of the truck so we did travel a bit slower in some areas. Then we did have a fuel problem with one of our generators so that took us a bit of time to fix that up."

He says the parade didn't extend its run time due to the holiday, Thevenot wanted to make sure members made it home to enjoy Christmas Eve with their families.

"We had the parade going from five to eight that night and we try to stick to that because the members that are out that evening are volunteering their own time, and are away from their families on Christmas Eve. We tried to get everybody home by shortly after eight but we didn't arrive back to the station until eight-thirty that evening."

This year the usual route was also changed to accommodate new communities, and visit areas where they hadn't been.

The fire department apologizes for any troubles caused by the deviation in the parade route.

"I just want to apologize if there was any residents that we didn't make it to their area this year, we'll try hard next year to hopefully stick right to the plan."

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