first EVOC course in the Philippines

Last June 14, 2009. Retired US Airforce Captain Jason McDonald a firefighter/paramedic - our technical adviser. Conducted the first Emergency Vehicle Operators Course which is held at the 2nd company station at Barangay (Village) Pineda, Pasig City. Attended by 3 drivers and two company officers, in which this is our first batch. As usual, it began on a one day lecture of basic routine stuff, incident cases and most importantly the proper use of lights and sirens. I hate to mention it to this blog. Career and volunteer alike doesn't know exactly the proper use and the discipline of employing the light and sirens. The common practice here in the Philippines especially Metro Manila. Other than using in emergency incidents, most units use lights and sirens on going home or use lights only when going home to quarters. Or bullying through traffic when going somewhere in the hurry (although Traffic Enforcers looked the other way). So naturally for quite some time the civilian motorist is immune to lights and sirens. They did not yield most of the time or hogging in front of the apparatus during real emergency response. The instructor reiterated the a "code-3" is for EMERGENCY ONLY ! no exceptions. It is a huge step of breaking the habit and proud to say our brigade is the first to embrace this knowledge to make our unit to conform to international standards of NFPA 1500 and NFPA 1002.

Although statistically emergency apparatus driving close calls and mishaps in the Philippines is not recorded properly except by memories by old timers. But generally speaking driving skills is a all time high and safe in which the last LODD case was 1998. When an old FMC apparatus got t-bone in a intersection from a different direction. Force the FMC apparatus to rollover killing instantly their officer. As I mentioned, although generally we had a safe driving. As an officer and my Chief and I believe this course will make our fire response more SAFER. One thing to add especially to westerners here in this FFN site. Our tender/tanker configuration have only single cab configurations so the rest of our members rides on top of the truck. And that goes to the rest of all volunteer or career units throughout the Philippines. Sad to say, local truck manufacturers are not aware of international standards that the members should be all inside the fire truck. So most fire trucks are manufactured that way. Only Japanese, U.S. or European fire trucks imported in the Philippines has double cab configurations. For now, the EVOC awareness will assign riding "spots" for now on the top of our tanker.

We are looking forward for the 2nd batch of students to be conducted as well soon ....