Pelham Fire Department channels Henny Youngman: "Take our sanitizer...please"
If a quizmaster asked you to “name a substance exported by Colombia,” your initial answer might be “coffee,” or, if you are feeling cheeky, “cocaine.”
Add hand sanitizer to the list.
In fact, the Town of Pelham has 1000 bottles of alcohol-based gel that was produced in the South American nation, and is willing—indeed, eager—to part with them, asking nary a peso in return. It’s libre, free, gratis.
Aloe and vitamin E are also part of the mixture, although Sylvia Zappitelli, Pelham’s Fire and Bylaw Administrative Assistant, detected the scent of agave, the plant from which tequila is derived.
“I was looking around for salt and lime,” she said with a laugh.
The Canadian importing company donated a whole tractor trailer load to the Niagara Region, said Fire Chief Bob Lymburner. Pelham got a skid of product.
Zappitelli got to play Sanitizer Santa.
“Just before Christmas, Jason [Longhurst, Pelham’s Fire Prevention Officer] and I went around to local restaurants and gave a lot of the sanitizer away…and then we went back into shutdown again,” she said. “We still have about 1000 bottles in stock.”
The product has reached its expiry date (which is largely bogus, because alcohol doesn’t appreciably degrade) and the Town has made the generous decision to offer the sanitizer for free to residents.
Zappitelli is expecting that a table loaded with sanitizer bottles will be set up at the Meridian Community Centre, in addition to being available at Fire Station 1 on Highway 20.
She advises that, despite the alure of the tequila smell, one should avoid the urge to lick one’s hands after applying the sanitizer.
Stock up for the next pandemic? Beat the hoarding now.
