Forget “look, don’t touch.”

When the Coupeville Library describes their upcoming Touch-a-Truck event from 2-3:30 p.m. on July 16 at the community green as interactive, they mean it. Guests of all ages can learn about the vehicles keeping cities safe and sound while watching demonstrations and even exploring the machines themselves.

Introduced in 2018, Touch-a-Truck grows in attendance every year it is held — almost 300 people attended last year. While the program is educationally geared towards children, Madeline Schroeder, a teen outreach librarian at the Coupeville Library, said the event hosts visitors of a wide range of ages.

“There’s usually something that everybody enjoys or learns regardless of how old they are,” Schroeder added.

A variety of vehicles are expected to attend the event, including a Town Marshal patrol car, a Central Whidbey firetruck, a WhidbeyHealth ambulance and a Life Flight helicopter. Several utility vehicles, like an Island Disposal garbage truck, will be at the event. The Island County Sheriff’s rescue boat may even make an appearance.

All of the vehicles at Touch-a-Truck are in commission, meaning in the event of an emergency, some may leave in the middle with lights ablaze and alarms blaring. Schroeder conceded that is not necessarily a bad thing, and recalled a firetruck doing just that in the past.

“It’s actually pretty cool for everybody to see what it’s like for them to have to mobilize and get the truck ready,” she said. “It’s exciting when the lights are on and they get to honk because the only rule we have for Touch-a-Truck is no honking.”

Other than honking, kids especially are encouraged to partake in vehicle tours given by their “handlers” also putting on presentations. In the past, Pacific Gas & Electric Company have raised the bucket of their utility truck as if preparing to work on an electrical wire, and paramedics demonstrated how to move a person inside the back of an ambulance for transportation.

“You get to go inside it and it feels a little bit like you’re being let in on this secret,” Schroeder said.

This kind of interactivity, with the machines as well as the people operating them, aligns with the library’s “values of connecting folks with information and resources in the community,” she explained.

First responders, transit workers and utility workers are a presence that is felt but not always seen. Touch-a-Truck provides a unique opportunity for community members to meet people and learn about jobs they might not otherwise have a chance to, at least not so up close and personal an environment.

“It helps give (people) new information,” Schroeder said, “but it also really encourages a lot of relationship building between community members and the people who are serving us in our community.”