A trip to remember
A firefighter from Warwickshire County Council’s Fire and Rescue Service has made a real impact in Chile as part of a national operation to train firefighters abroad.
In autumn 2007, Watch Manager, Mark Styzacker, from Stratford was asked along with Watch Manager, Gary Higson from Greater Manchester, to take part in a very personal challenge and visit Iquique in Chile as part of Operation Florian, a charity which donates fire service equipment and vehicles and provides firefighter and rescue training to communities in need across the world.
Both firefighters headed off to Iquique in November 2007. The island is situated on the pacific coast of South America and is in the desert region subject to a number of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcano eruptions.
The Fire service in Chile is provided by volunteers who don’t always have the right training to deal with the frequent dangers they face. Mark was attached to No11 Victoria Company and during their two week stay, Mark played a pivotal role in delivering training to more than 230 members, concentrating on the two main areas of road traffic collisions and firefighting training.
This is not the first time Mark has been abroad to train other firefighters. His first trip took him to in the Ukraine in April 2005. So although Mark knew roughly what to expect, he was still apprehensive about travelling to a country known for it’s natural disasters and in fact witnessed one of them, a 6.7 earthquake during his stay.
Mark Styzacker said:
“Firefighters’ in the UK are highly thought of in this part of the world and I was proud to represent Warwickshire. The whole experience of travelling to the southern hemisphere, teaching techniques used here by Warwickshire and then getting positive feedback from crews makes all of the effort truly worthwhile.
“The firefighting techniques taught during our stay are already having an impact on the fire fighters safety and casualty extrication times at road traffic collisions has improved dramatically. This is an area of teaching which can clearly extend to a number of other countries in a similar environment.”