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Firefighting training onboard warship
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Fire crews from the Defence Fire and Rescue Service (DFRS) and the City Fire Brigade have jointly used the visit of HMS Chatham to conduct familiarisation training on board a Royal Navy ship.
Over the weekend, nearly forty of Gibraltar’s firefighters from the two services went on board Chatham to watch demonstrations of the ship’s equipment and to be briefed on the systems used by the ship’s firefighting teams.
‘Most of my watch have been on board Navy ships before, said Watch Manager, Louis Sivers, ‘But we try to undertake this sort of training at least twice a year so that we keep up to date with any changes to the Navy’s procedures. On HMS Chatham we were surprised that they used exactly the same Personal Protective Equipment clothing as we do but we noticed that their Breathing Equipment and some of their procedures are slightly different.’
‘These days we don’t have many opportunities to liaise with fire teams on shore,’ said Chatham’s Chief Petty Officer Mike James. ‘There are two or three exercises each year in Plymouth but they can be spread across about twenty ships so Chatham could go for five or six years without conducting any training like this. But we do lots of on-board training before any deployment.’
‘Both the Defence Fire and Rescue Service and the City Fire Brigade were pleased to make the most of this opportunity,’ said Alec Button, Command Fire Officer at DFRS. ‘It is important that we all understand the potential risks created by a warship in the harbour.’
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