News

Chemdata® Licences Donated to Help Train Bosnian Firefighters

Earlier this year, The National Chemical Emergency Centre (NCEC) donated licences of its world-leading chemical hazard database, Chemdata, to the International Fire and Rescue Association (IFRA) as part of a relief mission to Cazin in North West Bosnia starting on 18 August.

IFRA is a charity that provides free fire safety training and kit to crews worldwide. The aim of the Bosnia mission was to deliver industry-donated kit and equipment to fire crews in the city of Cazin and provide practical training on how to use the different items properly.

Over the course of two weeks, a crew of IFRA firefighting professionals delivered an intensive programme of training to Bosnian fire crews and members of the local community.

The training programme focused on two areas:

Fire service training – aimed at local firefighters, concentrating mainly on appliance and equipment use.
Community training – educating local residents on in-home fire safety, and road and water safety best practice.

The fire service training covered several key areas including breathing apparatus, road traffic collisions, trauma care, firefighting tactics, hazmat awareness and information gathering, which included a demonstration of NCEC’s Pocket Chemdata® mobile app.

The convenience of the mobile app proved useful to IFRA in the practical delivery of the hazmat awareness training. Pocket Chemdata allowed trainers to access chemical hazard information remotely, demonstrating to local crews the type of information available via such platforms and the value it can have while dealing with an incident.

Commenting on the Bosnia mission, NCEC’s Chemdata Product Manager, Maria Stearn, said ‘NCEC is delighted to be a part of the relief effort and helping IFRA to raise standards in the level of fire safety response training being delivered worldwide. It is important to highlight the significance of accurate and timely chemical hazard information in an emergency situation. We’re pleased that Pocket Chemdata has proved a useful tool in demonstrating this.’

The Cazin mission was IFRA’s 9^th training mission to Bosnia and it’s 60^th worldwide. The trip was well received by local crews and residents alike, with proud members of the crew posting regular updates and highlights from the mission online to friends and followers. For more details on the mission and to read the highlights from the trip, please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/389139507192/

For more information on NCEC’s Chemdata information visit Chemdata

For details of other NCEC’s emergency response services, please contact ncec@ricardo.com or call +44 (0) 1235 753654.

Image shows IFRA members who attended the training mission