Firefighters Crossing Borders began assisting firefighters in the State of Jalisco in 2008. Our first mission was a joint effort with TAPFIRE to assist in the creation of a fire department for Ayutla. TAPFIRE, our partner agency, was instrumental in the equipping and training the first-ever fire department of El Grullo in 2006.2010 Puerto Vallarta hosts first Regional training event.
The first annual Firefighter Regional Training event took place August 12th and 13th, 2010 and was hosted by Puerto Vallarta Fire Department.
80 firefighters attended from: Puerto Vallarta, Bahía de Banderas, Estado de Jalisco y Nayarit, Aeropuerto, Compostela and Mascota.
Participantes tented overnight at the training location. After setting up their tent camp and a light lunch, training begain. The large class was divided into 6 teams and rotated through different training tracks on the first day including search technics, ladders, fire extinguisher and foam application.
Lunch, dinner and breakfast where provided by Bahia de Banderas Rotary club. A number of the Rotary Club members helped setup and serve the food.
After a very short night in their tents, alarms were sounded and firefighters started training again at 2 AM. The night training went well and included large diesel fires, car fires and confined space rescue exercises.
They trained most of the night and were one very tired group in the morning....as were all the instructors.
But after a short break, coffee and breakfast they were thrust back into action. The morning training focused again on car and bus fires.
The event in general was a wonderful success!
This was truly a major step forward for the local and state fire departments. They're very excited about their new found ability to plan and execute combined training exercises.
