Santa Claus will be a busy fellow next week. In addition to his normal holiday chores, St. Nick will find time to travel through Plateau neighborhoods, courtesy of local firefighters.

Enumclaw: Santa will be patrolling on a fire engine next week as part of an annual program sponsored by the local Volunteer Firefighters Association.

As usual, an emergency vehicle - with lights on and Christmas music playing - will cruise a couple of blocks ahead of Santa's truck to alert residents.

Santa's fire truck will follow shortly behind and volunteer firefighters on foot will deliver candy canes. For safety sake, firefighters ask that everyone remain on the sidewalk - the firefighters will deliver the goodies.

They'll be making their rounds between 6 and 9 p.m.

Here's the schedule Santa's crew will be keeping:

€ Dec. 14, neighborhoods west of Semanski and north of Roosevelt

€ Dec. 15: areas south of Roosevelt Avenue and west of state Route 410

€ Dec. 16: everything east of Florence to Division and north of Roosevelt

€ Dec. 17: everything east of Division Street and north of Roosevelt Avenue.

Dec. 18 will be dedicated to any areas missed due to poor weather or Santa's helpers being called away on emergency business.

Buckley: Santa will be carried around in a 1942 Ford fire truck, driven by firefighters and helped by firefighters and Explorers at the rear of the engine. This is an annual event put on by the all-volunteer department.

What they ask for in return is a food donation. All food collected is given to families in need for the holiday season. The department receives help from the local Camp Fire Girls to put food baskets together. What is left over is donated to the Buckley Food Bank.

This all begins about 6 p.m. Monday.

This also begins of the &#8220Giving Tree” program the Fire Department agreed to take over a few years ago. Kids to age 17 are the target for this program. In order to get signed up, call and register. The Buckley Fire Department can serve only those people residing in the 98321, 98323 and 98396 ZIP codes. The program is done in conjunction with the Toys for Tots program. The phone number for registration is 360-829-1441, ext. 227. The last day to sign up is Dec. 14.

For those wishing to donate a toy to the program, special trees can be found in the lobby of the Buckley police station and at the Buttered Biscuit restaurant. Take a tag from the tree for the age and gender of the child to be helped, purchase a gift and return the tag with the gift to the fire station, police station or the Buttered Biscuit. There also will be drop boxes for gifts at Mount Rainier Bank and Frontier Bank. Gifts will be distributed Dec. 17.