Firemen compete to polish skills

It is not easy to duplicate in a drill the life and death circumstances of a real fire. But friendly competition in the fire-fighter’s art is still a good way to keep Belize’s professional and volunteer firemen sharp. Jose Sanchez reports from the M.C.C. Grounds.

Jose Sanchez, Reporting

They may not be chosen to represent Belize at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, but the skills that these athletes possess are more important than any sport. It’s the eighth Fire-fighters Olympiad and firemen from all over the country are competing in ten events. Fire Chief Henry Baizar explains the importance of the breathing apparatus drill.

Henry Baizar, Fire Chief

“This is B.A. donning. It’s what the guys will have to and get themselves prepared before they enter a building on fire. It’s a team, four teams will participate at any given time, two from each team, so eight guys. What they will do, they will have to fix up the equipment, attach it together, put it on, put on all the straps, put on the face mask and actually don the set so that they are breathing regularly and they are breathing as normal and then they are ready to go into the building.”

Karl Longsworth, Official

“This drill here is the two man hose drill. Two lengths of hose will be run out and whenever the last length of hose goes out, the branch pipe will be put on to the end, the two men must be at the hose, they put up their hand signalling that they’re ready for the flow of water.”

Jose Sanchez

“In case of a real situation, how would this help them?”

Karl Longsworth

“This helps when we don’t have radio communication. This is what they will have to do. They will have to do a lot of running in a real situation if you don’t have radio communication.”

Chadwick Forman, Competitor

“Really some tight competition, if we would had have the hoses we practised with, instead of these ones, we would have done much better.”

Jose Sanchez

“But in a real situation you would have to work with what you have though.”

Chadwick Forman

“Yeah.”

The activities are entertaining as well as hard work. But as one of the officials pointed out, rather than placing first in an event, it’s more important to be efficient.

Bob Stevens, Official

“We think that there’s a little bit of over enthusiasm and the slipping and the rolling of the hoses wasn’t as good as it should be. The concept is that when they role their equipment and put their equipment away, they have to be ready to go back out at a moments notice. So it makes no sense if the equipment’s not rolled properly because you can’t re-deploy it. So we just have to reign it in a little bit, calm down, and make sure we do the job properly.”

Miguel Medina, Competitor

“We never prepared so much, we used so much energy plus we planned to have good timing but always committed errors we never expected to commit. I think our time was bad.”

Jose Sanchez

“But you’ll keep practising though.”

Miguel Medina

“of course, for next year, we do it much better.”

Ramon Chi, Competitor

“I see room for more improvement, because I notice how I control the B.A. I was a little slow on it, but eventually I’ll be going much faster.”

Bob Stevens

“This is just not a game, this is real for them. They have to treat and run these drills same as they would in a real fire. Like you said, it’s a report card. It’s a measure of testing how well they are training throughout the year, especially when they are mostly volunteers.”

And while some may be using the drills to measure their own effectiveness, others like the Punta Gorda volunteers are here to prove a point.

Ronnell Pennell, Competitor

“We just came to win, win, win. It means a lot to us.”

Jose Sanchez

“And you’re a volunteer, so how does it feel to be doing well?”

Ronnell Pennell

“I work hard for this, so I feel good.”

Jose Sanchez

“And you?”

John Roaches, Competitor

“I feel good to be here. I’ve been working out hard with my team-mates and I feel good today, I feel like this is the first victory.”

Reporting for News 5, Jose Sanchez.

The Fire Olympiad continues on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. at the M.C.C. Grounds.