Officers of the Barbados Fire Service (BFS) are seeking to ensure they are prepared to meet the changing demands for their services.
Deputy Chief Fire Officer, Henderson Patrick, revealed this on Saturday during the opening ceremony of a community fair at the Bush Hall Community Centre in St. Michael.
He said this followed a 2020 review of the service where an analysis was carried out on the demands of the public and the types of emergencies to which officers were called on to respond.
“If the fire service is going to remain relevant; it has to take knowledge of the changes that are taking place around it and develop strategies to respond effectively to those challenges when they do arise. And therefore, this was one of the driving factors that caused us to take this review,” he explained.
The community fair was held under the theme: Resilience, Reconnecting, Renewal and Retooling.
Coming out of that review the 2020-2025 strategy was developed to provide greater assistance to persons who may require pre-hospital care. Mr. Patrick noted that this would be done in association with the Emergency Ambulance Service to ensure persons in Barbados are exposed to timely and effective pre-hospital care.
The Deputy Fire Officer pointed out that as more people were becoming health conscious, more were hiking in gullies and exploring the island to keep fit. However, he added that the BFS recently received a call for assistance to rescue persons who were hiking and “became affected while on that trip”.
“So, it suggests to us, that the mandate of the [Barbados] Fire Service is actually expanding. And this is one of the reasons why this particular strategy becomes relevant today,” he stated.
He further pointed out that fire officers would soon have a presence in the Bridgetown Port, and would have to receive the requisite training to ensure they were competent to respond to emergencies within that kind of environment.
“Therefore, officers will be trained in land-based fire-fighting, and will be able to respond to incidents,” he stressed, noting that the strategy also focused on the development of the Service’s human resources to ensure that officers were trained to effectively respond to changing incidents.
The Deputy Fire Chief, who said the strategy also focused on the area of community risk reduction across Barbados, said: “Not only has the Fire Service conducted hazard analysis within the various geographic locations of our station locations, but we have mandated the officers, the commanders that are responsible for those areas, to ensure that they develop some strategies to be able to manage the risk that they have identified in those locations.”
While emphasising that the BFS could not do it alone, he said there was a need for the organisation to reconnect with persons living in communities so they would come on board to build resilience.