FIREGROUND Partnership Boosts Fight Against Fire and Haze
APRIL has recently engaged the expertise of FIREGROUND, an Australian fire training and incident management company, to design, develop and deliver specialist incident management systems support for the APRIL fire teams in Riau province, Indonesia.
The system, following international standards, will provide an additional layer of expertise for the APRIL team which is already recognized for its world class firefighting capability and its fire prevention programmes.
Fire management throughout Sumatra has become a vital concern because of the impact smoke haze from agricultural fires has on human health and the significant political and international pressure to tackle this hazard.
APRIL has dedicated teams to tackle peat fires, coupled with its wide-reaching community education programmes focused on fire prevention.
The company’s multi-faceted Fire Free Village Programme (FFVP) will cover more than 700,000 ha of community agricultural land in 2017 – including teaching fire awareness to communities and working directly on fire prevention in villages.
The 2017 programme now includes the partnership with FIREGROUND that has been training the APRIL fire teams to follow incident management systems that will enhance their response to fires.
APRIL staff testing incident management skills as part of Incident Control System (ICS) training
The “Incident Command System” (ICS) is a set of guidelines and procedures for managing incidents and short duration management operations. It provides a management structure and common terminology that enables effective use of personnel and equipment with clear hierarchies, lines of communication and forward planning.
FIREGROUND is delivering workshops to fire team managers — including those from the APRIL-supply partners — to give an overview of the system and how it can effectively link teams in managing fire responses.
Dave Hitchcock, CEO of FIREGROUND, said: “I am pleased to be involved with APRIL again and look forward to improving the firefighting capabilities in Riau. These incident management systems will make a significant difference in the effort to minimise smoke haze in the Asian basin – which is good for the climate and for Indonesia.”
