Firefighters From United States, Canada and Afghanistan Train Together

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Firefighters and law enforcement agents from the City of Fresno, California, with the assistance of Brotherhood of the Badge International, recently hosted firefighters from Afghanistan and Canada for an international training exchange.

Four Afghani firefighters spent seven days with Fresno's firefighters and police officers training on the latest techniques for first responders.  The four men were chosen for this mission because they were high ranking training officers in their departments.  The City of Fresno sent them home with numerous books and manuals so that they could share their training with their fellow firefighters and police officers in Afghanistan.

At the same time, a group of firefighters from Canada also came to the United States for the exchange of training and information.  Chief Randy Bruegman of the Fresno Fire Departments explained, "They came in when the Afghani's were here and spent the week with us and actually brought their Chief and two or three of their senior leadership."

Although only one of the Afghani first responders could speak broken English, the cultural exchange was immense.  Two of the firefighters were from the City of Kabul, where there are over 2 million residents and only five fire stations.

Chief Bruegman explains the significance of this, saying, "There's 15 to 20 firefighters in each one of those stations, and if you think about how we deploy resources and the type of resources that we have available and our response times and compare it to what they're doing, it's just like going to a different world, not only a different country, but a different world."

Bruegman talks about the importance of doing international training missions, explaining that not only is it helpful to firefighters from other countries, but it is also beneficial to firefighters in the United States.  He says, "International exchange provides a great opportunity for the exchange of information...Sometimes we don't hold the patent on all the good ideas here in the United States, and I think we need to reach out and learn from others so that we can make our service better and protect our people the best we can."

For more information on Brotherhood of the Badge International and their mission, visit www.botbonline.org.

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Author:William Leatherman - FDNNTV.com