Back in the Spring of 2005, Woodstock Fire Department was lucky enough to qualify for a Homeland Security grant which enabled us to outfit every member of the department with new Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This left a large amount of old gear - jackets, pants, boots and helmets that would normally be sent to the dumpster. That is until one of our members, Bob Coates, heard about a program called Mutual Aid Americas (MAA) which reuses this old equipment for Latin American fire departments. These Firefighters operate daily with little or no resources. Later that same summer, Woodstock FD dispatched a truck down to Concord, NH to drop off all of our unwanted PPE to a collection point for shipment to South America.
All of the turnout gear ended up in a town called Guayaquil in Ecuador. Firefighters there protect a huge city with very little in the way of modern firefighting resources. Donations of equipment and training from MAA literally save lives - of Firefighters and of the people of the city.
We recently saw a letter in Firehouse magazine from Daniel Sheridan of the FDNY. He is the coordinator for the program. It turns out that Firefighters wearing WFD turnout gear were able to gain entry to a house fire and save two small children. Without the PPE, they would previously have been unable to do so !!
For a copy of the article, click here (Adobe Acrobat Format).
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