Hello all..
Some of you know me, and some dno't, so I will just give a quick intro.
I am a 22 year old volunteer firefighter with the Danish Emergency Management Agency (Like FEMA, but with a lot more operative units), and have been so for 5 years.
Also I have had 6 months of conscripted service, also in DEMA.
We have gotten a new, and very interesting mission that I would like to share with you all.
The UN has a mission in Lebanon, called UNIFIL, and their job is basically to make sure that Lebanon and Israel don't pick on each other and get in a fight.
In south Lebanon, the UNIFIL has their main base of operation, and this base also has a firehouse.
Recently the responsibility of the firehouse (and the logistics company) went to the Royal Danish Army.
The Danish Army hasn't got any major kind of firefighting equipment or experience, so they have outsourced the task to DEMA.
The thought of having civilians (non military personnel), with operative tasks in a UN-base is a very new one, but the UN is in general happy about it.
The task we have been given is to man a firehouse, to conduct supervision (buildingcodes, escaperoutes, correct extinguishers and so on) on ALL UN-things in Lebanon, to educate in basic firefighting with hand-extinguishers and much more.
The firehouse is manned by 10 firefighters:
- 1 chief
- 3 Crew Commanders
- 6 Firefighters
It is divided into 3 teams of 1 Crew commander and 2 firefighters.
One team will be on the firestation, one team will have the helopad-watch (sitting and waiting for something to crash), and the last team will have a day off (day off = supervision, educating and so on).
This kind of international mission is very new to DEMA.
We have been during international humanitarian missions for 20 years, and currently have both water purification equipment in Haiti and Pakistan, we run a UN logistic-base in Haiti and Pakistan, and we have an emergency mobile hospital deployed in Pakistan.
But a pure firefighting-mission is very new to us.
Also the task of having to work only 3 persons to fight a fire, is a very new thing that requires a lot of training. (Normally we respond as extra help to the local and regional firedeparments, with anywhere from 10 to 30 persons).
In general, a very interesting and challenging task, and also hopefully one that will show the UN, that civilian firefighters/emergency services, can work just as well, or better, in international operations, as military units.