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Stateside Comment
“We’re antiquated,
US Correspondent Catherine Levin reports on playing catch-up with fire prevention
we’re complacent,
A
well, but we don’t
ll I can think about as I start my approach to Baltimore Penn train station is The Wire. Dominic West played McNulty, the hard-drinking cop who battled the drug dealers whose foot soldiers hung around on corners of the boarded up streets of Baltimore. I only realised during series two of The Wire that McNulty was actually English. I too am a lone English voice (minus the fake US accent) in Baltimore as I speak at the Vision 20/20 conference in late March. Vision 20/20 is an IFE sponsored project that’s been around since 2006 with the ambitious goal of bringing fire prevention to the US Fire Service. I say it’s ambitious because with so many fire services here in the US, ranging
from tiny volunteer services in remote rural areas to large city fire departments, it’s a hard sell. I am here to share the UK experience. And there is great interest in the home fire safety visit programme carried out by fire and rescue services in the UK. It’s incredible to think that some fire services in the US don’t consider fire prevention as core business. And in many ways the UK is light years ahead of the US in this field of work. One of the speakers bemoaned the attitudes of his colleagues and summed them up well when he said: “We’re antiquated, we’re complacent, we put out fires real well, but we don’t do prevention”. Thankfully there are some really positive examples and some great work going on
we put out fires real do prevention” in the field. “We’re going to put a smoke alarm in every kid’s home” proclaimed one speaker, but like many of the attendees at the conference, he had no budget. And there’s the rub. The vast majority of the work talked about here in Baltimore is funded by federal grants. With 1,175 applications for the 2014 $340 million Assistance to Firefighters Grant programme and its 80 per cent rejection record, the likelihood of sustaining work for more than one year is slim. The US is in the position that the UK was years ago when the Labour government provided grants to get fire prevention into the heart of the Fire and
Rescue Service. Those grants dried up a long time ago but with the language changing to ‘transformation’ and the appearance of a £75 million fund to, amongst other things, ‘prioritise prevention and protection’, echoes of the past start to emerge. Transformation must avoid ending up with the government funding laudable projects with staff on one year contracts and no hope of continuation when the grant runs out. There needs to be some smart thinking in the US to ensure that winning grants to develop fire prevention work leads to long term mainstream change and demonstrable reductions in fires, injuries and fire fatalities. The US will be looking to learn from what transformation really means for the UK Fire and Rescue Service in the future. Let’s hope at the next Vision 20/20 event the UK Fire and Rescue Service can still demonstrate it is way out there and leading the way in fire prevention.
Run the New York Marathon for Operation Florian Operation Florian looking for willing volunteers for this year’s New York Marathon
UK Fire Service participants from last year’s Operation Florian team who ran the New York Marathon
O
n November 2, 2014, more than 50,000 runners from all over the globe will compete in the prestigious New York Marathon. This will include a team from Operation Florian who will be raising money for their global humanitarian work. Operation Florian is a UK Fire
Service humanitarian charity working across the globe by training, donating equipment and improving firefighting capabilities to deprived Fire Service communities, thus saving lives. For the 2013 marathon our running team had the unique opportunity to join the Fire
Department of New York’s (FDNY) entourage in a blue light escort to the race start line, and an invitation to join FDNY’s after-marathon bash celebrations. The department also treated team Operation Florian with a visit to The Rock, the FDNY Training Academy on Randall’s Island, located between The Bronx, Queens and Manhattan. “It really is an unforgettable experience,” said Leon Dally from Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue. “It is a once in a lifetime trip and a humbling experience. You will never see anything like the crowds in New York.” Mark Haslam added: “It’s a chance of a lifetime experience. If you’re going to run a marathon, make it the NYC marathon – the company and crowds make it unforgettable’. The New York Marathon is the fundraising highlight
of Operation Florian’s year. Each participant can choose from a selection of packages to best suit them. For further information contact Cathy Clark: fundraising.opflorian@ hotmail.com or tel: 07508 865 459/01304 617 859. Search on twitter for Operation Florian @opoflorian and tweet your challenge.
May 2014 | www.fire–magazine.com | 7