BCC to open fire fighter training centre

THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has said it is planning to open a fire services training centre, the first of its kind in the country, as well as two more fire stations in Cowdray Park and Waterford suburbs.

Speaking at a Fire, Emergency Response, Incident Command and Training Conference hosted by the BCC and Operation Florian in the city yesterday, Bulawayo Chamber Secretary Mrs Sikhangele Zhou said preparations for the opening of the fire services training centre were at an advanced stage.

Operation Florian is a UK-based charity organisation that assists fire, rescue and ambulance services throughout the world.

Mrs Zhou said they were planning to set-up the fire-fighting training centre which would be affiliated to the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in the next two years.

"We realised that in Zimbabwe we don't have a university that offers a fire engineering degree and we think it's a degree worth pursuing. There are opportunities, even forensics, and if we create that faculty of fire engineering we will find out that our analysis of fires and other accidents would be more conclusive than what we are getting," she said.

Mrs Zhou said the city was also looking at constructing two more fire stations in Waterford and Cowdray Park suburbs which are some of the furthest suburbs from the city's fire stations.

Bulawayo has four fire stations in Famona, Northend, Nketa and Nkulumane suburbs.

"We can't make it to Cowdray Park in 10 minutes – the international standard time to arrive on the scene, so we need to open fire stations in these two areas," said Mrs Zhou.

She thanked Operation Florian for its contribution to BCC and other local authorities in Zimbabwe.

"We also need further capacitation of other brigades to reduce pressure on the Bulawayo Fire services because we are servicing almost the whole Southern region. Sometimes we are called to Plumtree, Gwanda and Gweru but the distance is too much, remember we have the golden hour rule in firefighting hence we can't be there in time," said Mrs Zhou.

She said BCC's partnership with Operation Florian began in 2009 through Mr Shephard Ndlovu, a former Bulawayo fire fighter who is now a senior lecturer at the University of Lancashire.

Mr Ndlovu is also the Project Manager for Zimbabwe and board member at Operation Florian.

Operation Florian has donated a number of fire tenders as well as training and fire-fighting equipment and clothing not only to local authorities in the country but other institutions as well.

The Bulawayo one day conference was attended by officials from Operation Florian, students from the University of Central Lancashire, fire officers from Gwanda, Plumtree, Victoria Falls, Kwekwe, Rusape, Plumtree and other small towns.

Also present were fire fighters from Zambia who are also beneficiaries of Operation Florian.