Mutual Aid....to Sierra Leone

If you are a first responder, you know that there are times when the first dispatched units arrive on the scene of a call and realizing the enormity of the task at hand, they call for mutual aid. With proper advance planning, neighboring first responders answer the alarm and soon arrive to assist. However, what happens when your asked to respond half-way around the globe to assist the fire service in another country, on a different continent??

This is exactly what happened to Chief Jason Moore of the Bloomington IN Fire Department. In this podcast, Chief Moore relates the story of how he was asked to go to the country of Sierra Leone, on Africa’s west coast. However, to do so, the department would have to determine what had to be done and how to underwrite the effort. And what happens when they arrive to see a fire service unlike any other, these experienced firefighters had seen before.

This podcast educates all of us who are part of the firefighting/first responder family, that this very “family” is much larger and sometimes, more severely challenged, than we ever imagined. As a matter of fact, this podcasts tests each of us when it asks, “Are you ready to help fellow firefighters, as part of our “family,” even if they are on the other side of the globe, in a country wracked by poverty and civil war?

Would you?