A fire captain turned old water hoses into works of art to pay tribute to the men and women serving on the front lines.
Ryan Chagonjian, along with his wife Katie and their three daughters, resides in Napa, California. He has been working in the fire service industry for 14 years. When he was a young firefighter who had just completed his training and finished a 12-month probation period, he created his first American flag using old water hoses.
“When I finished my probation period, I wanted to make a gift for my fire station,” Chagonjian told The Epoch Times.
He mentioned that he noticed some old, discarded soft water hoses around him that were due to be thrown away. In that moment, he decided to create an American flag, which still hangs on the wall of Fire Station No. 2 near Napa High School.
In 2015, a parent from the high school who was fundraising for sports programs saw the flag at the fire station and asked Chagonjian if he could make a flag for a fundraising event. He agreed, and the flag was sold at the fundraising event for $13,000.
As the demand for his artwork continued to grow, Chagonjian’s hobby gradually turned into a family business.
Over the years, he has been making flags out of discarded water hoses and gifting them to local fire stations and retired firefighters. To date, his works have raised around $200,000 in donations for various charitable organizations, including those supporting emergency personnel, individuals who lost their homes to wildfires, high school teams, non-profits providing PTSD support for emergency responders, and the Red Cross.
“This is the American flag, which is very important to us and our families,” Chagonjian said. “It represents not just firefighters but all emergency personnel, whether they are dispatchers, police officers, or military.”
According to the Custom Fire Flags website, Chagonjian’s designs also include blue, red, and green threads representing the police, firefighters, and military.
“I think, you know, this is the backbone work of America, blue-collar work. To me, these flags symbolize our support for them and our country,” he said.
Because each flag is made from hoses used for firefighting, he said that such pieces carry an additional layer of significance. However, whether the hoses are new or old depends on the order. Larger orders require more materials and are therefore purchased directly from suppliers. Chagonjian mentioned that the retired hoses are usually obtained through government auctions or donations.
To create the flags, fire hoses are cut into small pieces, flattened, and then nailed onto a wooden frame. The painting of the “stripes” depends on the design. The stars on the flags are made of laser-cut birch wood.
Chagonjian also produces custom flags for families of fallen public servants. For such orders, he uses a laser engraving machine to add wooden badges with the officer’s number.
He mentioned that his family business has been handling around 600 to 700 orders on average each year in recent years, receiving thousands of orders since its establishment.
Despite his success today, his business originally started as a small craft shop on the e-commerce platform Etsy.
Over the years, as it gained popularity, Chagonjian and his family established a website that “evolved into a fairly large business.” People can order their flags by phone or submit requests online.
“It’s all been word of mouth, people have always wanted flags like these,” Chagonjian said. “It’s always humbling when people see our work and appreciate it.”
Customers purchasing his flags come from all over the country, and these flags have even gained international recognition. He has sent a flag to the UK and another to Canada. Currently, he is working on crafting a flag of Puerto Rico.
In 2023, the White House placed an order for a flag from Chagonjian’s company. He explained that a friend of his family who is a doctor had a Zoom meeting with the president, during which the president saw the flag in the background of the doctor’s video. After placing the order, Ryan and his family began making the custom piece and shipped it to the nation’s capital.
“For a small business to get into the White House is pretty cool,” Chagonjian remarked.
His team also replaced flags for customers who lost theirs in the wildfires that ravaged Napa County in 2017.
All the work is carried out in his family’s garage workshop, where he mentioned that everyone in his family, including his wife, father, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and possibly even his children one day, becomes involved.
He said that everyone has their own tasks, whether it’s attaching stars, painting the hoses, cutting the hoses, or making frames.
“It’s fun,” he said. “We’ve created this nice assembly line.”
Ultimately, he mentioned that the goal is to “focus on the basic elements” and ensure that his flag-making is top-notch. When he and his wife are not busy with the business, he said he is “first and foremost a father.”