I am in a 3rd world country and there is no standard here but a ton of firefighters tell me they want a standard and they want to follow NFPA standards but some of those firefighter do not practice that standard after they are informed of the NFPA standard and that leads me to think they never wanted to follow a standard but instead they just wanted the knowledge and will ignore standards as much as possible. Right now both of my fire brigades can respond within 15 minutes to a call within their AOR in heavy traffic. If no traffic then response time is about 10 minutes. This is a grea response time as when I was volunteering with the Philippine National Red Cross they took about 2 hours to arrive on scene. Once on scene you need to work wonders on your patients if they are still alive and you are only armed with a triangular bandage.

When I moved to the Philippines I though I could make a difference because I know they do not have any laws or standard for emergency care or EMS and Fire so when I started volunteering people were surprised at my medic bag as I had meds, IV's, needles, lines, bandages, etc... but now that is all used up and I am going back to the basics. I know I lost a ton of knowledge since I went from being a Paramedic with the tools to do the job to a Paramedic with a triangular bandage and a hope that the patient will survive. When I arrive on scene I will first treat patients if there are any and if there are not any patients then I will switch roles to being a firefighter but I find myself as the only foreigner firefighter so many brigades look at me and want to meet me and chit chat and at the scene the red cross wants to give me updates on what they are doing since I am no longer actively volunteering with them, at fires where both my brigades arrive they both want to talk to me and see how I am, and yet still, I feel so inadequate because because I guess I feel unfulfilled because I see so many firefighters practicing very bad techniques like arriving in only a bunker or going into a building without an SCBA or not securing their helmet. Little things can kill a firefighter and I hate hearing a firefighter was injured or killed. The last fire I went to I heard that 2 firefighters were injured, one with a twisted knee and I do not know about the other one.

I am trying to create some classes to help these firefighters get their act together and practice safer firefighting. To start off with the very basics I am going to teach ICS 100 and maybe 200 and go over 804 and after that I will move into EVOC. Then after that and many more months I will need to try and create a nice training course and have the firefighters challenge each other and build up teamwork and techniques. NFPA standards, here we come :D