Its not often that you get to go off road when responding to a house fire. We were going about 40 miles per hour in a bright red mercedes fire engine and thank god there were seat belts. This was the most violent ride of my life. A bright yellow helmets were flying all over the place. Through the front windshield I could see palm trees and shacks made of corrugated steel and cinder blocks. Behind us we were certainly leaving a long trail of dust. As the radio blared out information about the house fire, I desperately tried to comprehend my surroundings. On the one hand, I felt very at home with lights sirens and familiar equipment. The weird part is that we were responding traveling at hight speed through typical african villages in the suburbs of Kampala, Uganda. I never expected to feel so at home in Africa, but I discovered that the fire service family truly extends around the world. On a recent trip through nine countries in sub-saharan Africa, I had a unique opportunity to visit fire stations in many of those countries.
After finishing a year of work for the Dublin Fire Brigade in Ireland, I decided to pick up and leave for Africa. I left in July 2006 for Johannesburg, South Africa. The following map shows my route as I made my way up to the equator and back. Whether it was discussions about how to rescue victims from gas covered lakes in Zanzibar to security concerns in Johannesburg to vehicle extrication and medical transport for 25 plus patients in Maputo, there were many interesting and valuable experiences I had with the African fire service.
My trip started in South Africa where I found that the Johannesburg Fire Department is no different than any metropolitan fire department in the United States. Although the country of South Africa is a mix of first world and third-world areas, all their fire departments are first class. The Johannesburg Fire Department uses E-One fire engines, has traditional american firehouses, and actually uses the American NFPA codes.
Once you leave South Africa, the fire service is drastically different. Larger capital cities such as Maputo (Mozambique), Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), and Nairobi (Kenya), typically offer private security services that include ambulance care and fire service. These services are equivalent to what we would expect in the United States and intended to bypass insufficient or non-existent municipal police, fire and rescue services. Because there is a high expense associated with bringing in trainers from Western countries and maintaining the latest equipment, these services are prohibitively expensive for most Africans.
Most of the larger cities had municipal fire departments, some better than others. In Maputo, the fire department had two well equipped fire engines: one to protect the presidential compound and the other for a city of 200,000 people. The rest of their equipment had fallen into disrepair. I was told that it was common for the fire department to run out of gas and needed to collect money when they received an emergency call to go buy gasoline. In the Kampala (Uganda), the fire department was well staffed, well-trained, and had much of the same equipment that we would find on our fire engines. They had a dive team and Holmatro extrication equipment. Although I did not get the impression that their department was better funded than any others, they somehow pulled together a fairly professional operation. Many of the smaller fire departments seemed to be lacking compressors for charging SCBAs and had very little training. The Mzuzu Fire Brigade had to drive 500 miles each time they needed to refill their air bottles and the Moshi Fire Brigade had SCBAs but no clue what they were or how to use them. Most of their airpacks still had original tags on them. These smaller departments often had much of the necessary equipment but lacked training manuals and knowledgeable instructors.
