The Barbados Fire Service (BFS) is boosting its capacity to enhance its fire safety programmes within communities across Barbados.
This is being done through the participation of 24 junior cadets in the inaugural Advanced Junior Fire Cadet programme, now under way at the BFS headquarters in the General Post Office building on Cheapside, St. Michael.
Speaking during the opening ceremony of the programme this morning, Station Officer, Henderson Patrick, said the department was moving to provide young persons with a level of training and skills to make them more productive in communities.
???We expect that they will be able to assist people in the communities; tell them about fire safety; assist persons with the installation of smoke alarms; tell them when the smoke alarm is not functioning properly, [and] what they need to do; help us [the BFS] with hazard analysis of the various communities; tell us about the elderly people that live in your community and give us a log of that information and share it with the Fire Department so that we can better respond to the needs of those people in your community,??? he outlined.
Mr. Patrick, who is also Head of Training, told the cadets, all graduates from last year???s 14th Junior Fire Cadet programme, that they had a ???very significant and serious task??? ahead of them in promoting fire safety across the island.
During the one-week course, which concludes on Friday, the cadets will cover areas such as hazard analysis; what is a fire and how it comes about; how to use a fire extinguisher; methods of heat transfer; human behaviour during a fire; phases of evacuation; and how to report a fire. The course consists of practical and theoretical sessions, a tour, and a presentation to show how cadets can put what they learnt into practice.
julia.rawlins-bentham@barbados.gov.bb