Fire Training & Fire Education...

I was going to blog on a fire training subject but it can wait for the next blog posting, in a few days or so. With the events that have unfolding on a fire and major loss of live last week, I really feel compelled to write about the child care center fire in Mexico along with some other fire protection outlooks. We can look at this emergency incident last Friday and it’s usually after the fact that we always learn lessons of actions that should have taken place before hand. The lost of live is a major thing and it’s always troublesome when the lost of live could have been prevented and in this case, in my opinion, it wasn’t.

The child care center fire in Hermosillo, Mexico happened on June 5, 2009 and so far has killed 44 children. The apparent cause to this fire was due to a malfunction in an air condition that was located in a warehouse next to the child care center. Once the fire started the fire spread to the rafters of the warehouse building and across to the building housing the day care center. It was found that there was no alarm or sprinkler activation at time of the fire. It was also found that there was only one exit out of the child care center and another door that could have been use to egress out of the burning facility was bolted shut. The last fire inspection of the now gutted Mexican child care center was conducted on May 26, 2009. It was noted on that day the “safety inspection” of the facility “had fire extinguishers and emergency exit signs leading the way out.”

As a career fire fighter I would say training is the “backbone” of the fire service, and I would think all in the fire fighting field would agree with that outlook. Those in fire protection need good solid training to keep their skill set sharp to perform on the fire ground. But, as training is an important aspect to those in the fire protection field, education is just as important to the fire prevention side. You can not marginalize or understate the importance of fire prevention, and the same would go for good fire fighting training. They both go hand in hand. They both can prevent lost of live.

I heard in a fire fighting pod cast on the internet last week which stated in so many words that fire operations was all there is to fire fighting. Nothing else, it was all about the fire fighter doing the “operation" in the fire service. This pod cast further stated that the fire service shouldn’t bother or waste its time over the Sparky aspect and that it was, in so many more words, a waste of time and money. All you had to do is take a national survey poll or something to prove it to be so. I disagree totally to this one sided outlook and taking a so called national survey poll is like grasping at thin air to prove your point.

One doesn’t need to make up a survey poll to try and prove it’s all about the fire fighter or fire operations because it won’t measure up or stand up to the fire facts and fire statistics that are out there. One only has to check and do the research at the National Fire Protection Association or the U.S. Fire Administration to see the number of lives that have been saved and/or could have been saved through an aggressive fire education program. Fire education I would say then is the fire protection service’s “first line of fire action.”

Now it’s just a reality we will always have fire departments, fire equipment, and fire fighters in our communities to save lives when needed and to protect property when call upon. It becomes even clearer though, especially after a the fire and major lost of life in Hermosillo, Mexico, if good solid fire prevention practices as well as a real facility fire inspection was done correctly there might have been a lesser lost of live.

Human actions needs to be such that we all take fire prevention & education seriously, even those “old school” fire fighter that think it’s all about fire operations need to re-think outside the box. Fire training for fire fighters though should not and never be compromised. A fire fighter needs to be “brilliant in the basics” of fire fighting and the community needs to be fire smart & fire wise in fire prevention practices.