Rose Parade float has a firefighter, pancakes, syrup: Here's why some people were upset

"Atop the aerial ladder of a bright red fire engine, a firefighter wrangles a hose. From the spout pours not water but syrup, pumped from an enormous bottle. The stream of viscous liquid is aimed at a giant stack of pancakes 9 feet high. "Pancake Breakfast" is one of the dozens of floats expected to roll through Pasadena on New Year's Day in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. It was built by volunteers from Sierra Madre, a small foothill town that narrowly escaped the worst of the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena in January."

"But some residents in Altadena have said the design - and particularly the audio feature, in which a firefighter asks for more syrup - is upsetting, because during the destructive fires many hydrants in their neighborhood ran dry. "To depict anything where we are running out of liquid is maybe a little tone-deaf this year," Shawna Dawson Beer, the author of a community blog about Altadena, told Fox 11. "I think unfortunately this speaks to something that we fire survivors have experienced all year and that is a lot of action being taken on our behalf," Beer said. "Ultimately, all of these folks with the best intentions and biggest hearts just need to actually talk to the survivors.""

"Evelyn Shaffer, treasurer at the Sierra Madre Float Assn., which holds a contest each year to select the design of a float to be featured in the Tournament of Roses, found the float quaint and the Dalmatian standing watch by the red engine "just adorable.""

An oversized float called "Pancake Breakfast" features a firefighter on a red engine spraying syrup onto a nine-foot stack of pancakes for the Tournament of Roses Parade. Volunteers from Sierra Madre built the float to honor first responders and to reference community pancake breakfasts that raise funds and build ties with firefighters. Some Altadena residents objected because many neighborhood hydrants ran dry during the Eaton fire that destroyed parts of Altadena in January, making the syrup gag and its audio cue feel insensitive to survivors. Sierra Madre organizers described the float as quaint and adorable.

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