Everyone is safe and tired as they make their way home. From Connecticut, Illlinois, Wisconsin, Washington, Oregon and California, 6 instructors came together for the first time under the direction of Jordan Pollack, Fire chief for the Breitonbush FD in Oregon, they put on a week long Truck ops academy culminating in a final scenerio.

Utilizing recent acquisitions of a Ladder truck, and telesquirt and including firefighters from surrounding departments, we have made head way in enhancing their capabilities, not only within their own department but in their ability and willingness as seperate departments, to work together.

 A final debrief will occur soon and a report will be posted along with a special thanks to those instructors who made their way to culiacan and became part of an extrordinary event. Check out the few pics already loaded in the Culiacan 2008 page.

Hola friends, its day 4 of the conference and with the help of our friends with the bomberos de San Diego, I have had several talks and are working on creating a network for moving donations into Mexico.

Our friends from Tecate and Culiacan are here and its been great seeing old friends. Many activities here in the colonial city of Guadalajara and the history and beauty are un comparable.

The Association puts on a great party and we are always busy. will update more later. Adios

Our Web Master is diligently working on a reworked website. We have gathered suggestions from visitors, directors and friends and are making our site more friendly and relevant. Stop back soon to check it out.

With 8 instructors and enterpreters from around the country, on November 3, 2008 we will be putting on a week long Ladder Truck academy in the City of Culiacan. A city of over 1 million citizens, they acquired their first 100 foot Ladder Truck in 2006 and most recently a 55′ telesquirt donated by Turlock, California. Building on the initial training received in 2007 we hope to provide usefull and much needed skills enabling the Firefighters of Culiacan to continue to operate in safety while  save lives. We are also in discussion with the City of Mazatlan to send firefighters and apparatus to participate in this training. We hope this will be the beginning of a relationship between the two largest cities in the state of Sinaloa.

Hurst Inc. makers of the “Jaws of Life” officially announced a partnership with Firefighters Crossing Borders to get reconditioned older rescue tools to emergency agencies outside the United States. The release was carried on Reuters, AP, Miami Herald and various other news reporting agencies. Since then we have been receiving many requests for help, offers of donations and inquiries to get involved.

Coming soon to our website, we are working on creating new pages highlighting those requests so that we can put those needing help with those offering. Anyone visiting our site who might be inclined to help, may find a place and request that touches them.

Now more than ever we are in need of all kinds of help and donations. We expect several dozen rescue tool units and are working on getting them where they will do the most good. Please take the time to browse this site and make a donation.

We have worked hard over the past year to bring the Western States engine purchased for Ayutla into Pump ready status. Crime Stoppers of Tacoma has arranged for the engine to be shipped to Ayutla mid September.  September 6 in Gig Harbor you can see us and the other partners in the Ayutla project with the new batch of apparatus heading south to Ayutla and El Gruilo at the 2nd annual Bash For Gas.

The Pictures are of Firefighters Crossing Borders member Dale Togstad FF/EMT of Gig Harbor Fire, working on the finishing touches.

At Approximately 1pm Eastern, Hurst inc. Makers of the “Jaws of Life” are planning to anounce their nationwide rebate program for older extrication tool units and the new relationship with Firefighters Crossing Borders.org. As the older exchanged units are brought in they will be refurbished and donated to our organization for distribution and training to Emergency agencies in Mexico and other countries through our many contact agencies.

We are still in need of all types of donations to help us continue our missions. If you wish to help contact us through our donation page on this site.

Stay safe, Go home

If your traveling through Mexico on August 22nd you may run into the happennings during Mexico’s national Firefighters Day. Stop in and visit with a bombero while doing the tourist thing.

Tonite we took over Harbor Rock Cafe in Gig Harbor, Wa for a fund raiser. We garnered over 14 friends and members to wait tables, bus and to generally get the word out about our great organization. With T-shirt sales (soon to be available on this site) and donations we raised over $1000 in less than 4 hours.

Great Jobs by Amy and Scott Booth who organized the event, Mark Baker and Joel Schwarz who worked on logistics, and not at the least the over 10 friends and members who spent the time to help raise money for Firefighters Crossing borders.org. To the members of Gig Harbor Fire Dept who brought their familes and friends to dine and help us out we are so appreciative and speachless at the show of support for our mission.

Our first real fund raiser and hopefully not our last. T-shirts can be had for a minimum donation of $15 plus shipping. There will soon be an order form but for now if you must have these hot items contact us through the web site and we will get one to you.

We have been spending the last three days with our good friends and FFCB members, Steve and Patty Marks. Steve works as a Captain/PM for Emeryville FD and allows us to use his house as a stop over on our way to and from Mexico.

We know that its 16 hours to home from Sacramento, and as we get older and more curious we have tended to split the trip and look for places to stay and check out. We have also been able to visit fire departments along the way as well.

One such department recently was the Rogue River Fire Dept. Some time ago Chief Dan Hunt of the Rogue River Fire Department in Oregon, contacted us through our website with an offer for a equpment donation. For the past year we have tried to catch someone coming down to the area to pick up the items, and with the issues of surplusing the timing wasn’t the best. We were able to contact Chief Hunt and arrange to pickup some surplused equipment as we headed back this trip.

Here we are spending the nite near Rogue River in Grants Pass, Oregon. After some other than Mexico cuisine we can’t wait to arrive back home.

We are already planning our next board meeting to debrief this trip and work on our next project which has currently been scheduled. We are working with Turlock FD in Ca to ship a  1990 telesquirt to Culiacan FD in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. November of 2008 an instructor team lead by steve Ness of Whatcom County Washington and interpreters possibly from New Mexico, and Alabama will head to Culiacan for a 4-5 day Ladder ops academy. We are excited to return to Culiacan after delivering their Ladder truck in 2006.

While on our trip we learned of an effort by the Pierce Co Fire Chiefs lead by Chief Greg Miller of McNeal Island FD, to raise money for us to purchase an enclosed trailer. This year we were almost trailerless until the boys at ERTI (Emergency Response Trainng Institute) out of Seattle Fire came through for us. We are looking for a 20 ft enclosed double axle trailer to meet our needs for our pickups and missions.

We leave in the morning and hope to be hugging our wives by the evening. Thanks for following along with us and  look forward to our newsletter that we will undertake upon return.