NEW YEAR'S EVE 2010

*
· ·
" ' "
· ´ ´ ·
" ' " ' "
. , . , . , .
""")("""

HAVE A NICE SAFE NEW YEAR'S EVE .-

EINEN GUTEN RUTSCH INS NEUE JAHR .-

TANTI AUGURI PER UN BUON CAPODANNO .-

BON RÉVEILLON À TOUT LE MONDE .-

DESEJAMOS UM BOM FIM DE ANO.-

A LITTLE THOUGHT ON BEHALF OF THOSE IN NEED

A little thought on behalf of the work of all those voluntary workers and volunteers who have helped (and are still helping) to alleviate the suffering of those in need, 'here or there'.

There are more people than you all think, but discretion or humility is one the characteristics of Humanitarian Aid. Although we don't know the full names of everyone, they are there when one needs them.

Please, keep a thought to them (at least along Christmas Time).

Happy Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Firefighters Without Borders Spain would like to wish you happy Christmas in peace and harmony, which is so difficult to maintain.

As it it were one day more in our lives, we will keep working towards Equality and to alleviate the suffering of those who don't know what a party is and nor happiness.

Merry Christmas!!!

GENEROUS DUMMY

With permission from CREU ROJA CATALUNYA (Catalan Red Cross), we would like to share with you this link to a video that we think it is very good and conveys, in a few seconds, an idea that sometimes volunteers cannot put into words because we simply 'live it'. We hope you will enjoy it.

Here we leave you, too, the translation of the Spanish audio that you will listen to: "There are people who are born ready to help others. Men and Women that, sooner or later, will end up being Red Cross volunteers. Help us."

Course about TPL & Water Treatment Device

Friday 22nd October, some members of FWB Spain attended to a refresher course (in Malaga city) about the use of the Trapped Person Locator (TPL) and the water treatment device&system.

If you wanna take a look at pictures, go to this link.

FWB SPAIN MEMBERS&VOLUNTEERS' WORK DESCRIPTION

Firefighters always increase their education and training, and make maximum use of available resources to reduce the impact of disasters at the local level. Volunteer firefighters do the same at an international scale and are one of the first lines of defense.

According to the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words", we would like to share with you this video that we created in FWB Spain with the aim of summarizing and presenting the different work areas of our organization.

We hope you'll like it.

Not only Humanitarian Aid, but...

"WE ARE HERE TO SAVE YOUR ASS"

Firefighters aren’t super men or unusual men, but it’s true we are made of sterner stuff because when everybody goes out of a building, ship, boat or whatever, we enter without delay with a single purpose: to save lives and belongings of others.

We always risk our life since we leave the fire station trying to get as soon as possible the destination, dodging traffic and drivers and trying not to cause unnecessary risks until we come back to the fire station safe and sound.

"UPRISING" - MUSE

There are many cases where to say 'NO' to situations that we don’t accept or with ones we disagree can trigger the use of force or psychological abuse by those who want to force us to act against our principles.

We can understand this song by Muse, as a vindication of the dignity of human beings and as a "critical review" of the world where we live in and attitudes that should be mitigated.

THE POWER OF A SIGNATURE

"Your signature is powerful than you think"

Take a look at this video and you'll understand what this sentence means...

BOARD OF DIRECTORS, DELEGATIONS AND LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES OF FWB SPAIN

BOARD OF DIRECTORS, MALAGA:

• President: Miguel Rey Pérez
mijuana@gmail.com
Telephone: 618654325 / 630942307.

• Vice-president: Lorenzo Álvarez Rojo.
larfire@gmail.com
Telephone: 618654329 / 607815222

• Economic Vice-president: Juan Manuel Ravina Vergara.
elyeti@yetiaventura.com / jumarave@hotmail.com
Telephone: 618654327 / 952229323.

• Secretary: Maria García.
meryboe@gmail.com
Telephone: 618654326 / 657998535.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DELEGATIONS:

• DELEGATION IN TENERIFE

Delegate: Reyes de Miguel Renedo.
himareyes@hotmail.com
Telephone; 677509407


• DELEGATION IN ALBACETE

Delegate: Luis Enrique Utiel
leutiel@hotmail.com
Telephone; 627905035


• DELEGATION IN BARCELONA

Delegate: Clemente Pérez Costea.
bomberossinfronteras.cat@telefonica.net
Telephone: 607810411

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES:

• REPRESENTATIVE IN VALENCIA

Ignacio Iturriaga García.
iiturriaga@gmail.com
Telephone: 616990505.


• REPRESENTATIVE IN CASTELLON

Javier Sans Borras.
javisanz75@telefonica.net
Telephone: 600415081.


• REPRESENTATIVE IN ISLAS BALEARES

Joan Rosello Más.
jrossellomas@yahoo.es / joan63@ozu.es
Telephone: 639383925.


• REPRESENTATIVE IN GALICIA

José Torres Fernández
firefighter@telefonica.net
Telephone: 639506040.


• REPRESENTATIVE IN TOLEDO

Francisco Velamazán Cabrero
fvelamazan@hotmail.com
Telephone: 656316578

FIREFIGHTERS WITHOUT BORDERS SPAIN (NGO)

Joe Alamo Granado, a Secondary School student, is a boy who dreams to become a firefighter. Until that day will arrive, he wanted to express what this job means for him through this video full of images and words that summarize it perfectly.

From here, we want to thank him for his words and to congratulate him on this video. At the same time, we encourage him to follow his ideals and to keep fighting for his dreams to become true.

We hope you will like this video as much as us.

Regards,

LINKIN PARK - "Not Alone"

With the song ‘Not Alone’, LINKIN PARK wanted to put its grain of sand to the rehabilitation training in Haiti through its music.

We want to share this video with you and we hope it will not leave you indifferent to the terrible tragedy that this country suffered last January.

TSUNAMI. DECEMBER 2004.

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake.The earthquake was caused by subduction and triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 230,000 people in fourteen countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 15 meters high. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Indonesia was the hardest hit, followed by Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, it is the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph.This earthquake had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, between 8.3 and 10 minutes.It caused the entire planet to vibrate as much as 1 cm and triggered other earthquakes as far away as Alaska.

PROJECT IN GALICIA (REGION IN THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF SPAIN). 2007.

This was a Project created by Joseph Torres. It consisted of providing workforce protection and personal safety equipments, such as fire fighting clothing, to the firefighters in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
After having stayed in this city several months in the aftermath of the tsunami in 2004, Joseph promised those local firefighters to bring them suitable clothing to work, given the fact that they only had three plastic intervention jackets and rubber fire fighting boots.
He went throughout every Fire Station in Galicia and he got 1,275kg of workforce clothing donated by different Fire Stations and Firefighters coming from the 4 Galician provinces. Therefore, Joseph sent the safety material collected to his counterparts in Aceh despite the multiple bureaucratic and logistic problems he had to face.
In the end, a project and a person responsible of it were the only ones that made the completion of the project possible.

DOCTORS OF THE WORLD SPAIN. INDONESIA. 2005.

After the tsunami in 2004, hundreds of NGOs worldwide deployed to Indonesia during the post-emergency phase to undertake several tasks.
On the one hand, Doctors of the World Spain was among them and it worked hardly in different areas of Sumatra, this time in Calang and Banda Aceh to be precise, regions highly struck by the earthquake. The creation of permanent hospitals to treat local people in those areas was one of its purposes.
On the other hand, members of Firefighters without Borders Spain contributed to ensure that those fixed purposes were complied with and that the completion of the Doctors of the World Spain projects was successful.

EARTHQUAKE IN PADANG ON INDONESIA’S SUMATRA ISLAND

An earthquake of 7.6 in magnitude on the Richter scale. Firefighters without Borders Spain and United Firefighters without Borders Spain were at the seismic activity’s epicentre. In this occasion, rescue operations were carried out as well as different home rehabilitation projects, tents for schools and water purification methods were developed with posteriority.

A FIRE DRILL IN THE CITY OF VELEZ, MALAGA. 2008.

Firefighters, health workers, Civil Guard members, National Police officers, Emergency Military Unit team (UME) and Civil Protection members arrived to Velez from many parts of Spain with the aim of giving a professional character to the different scenes and events created for the simulation of all kinds of accidents where all the beforementioned professional ones must take part in.

TENERIFE – AN EARTHQUAKE DRILL OF 7.2 IN MAGNITUDE. MARCH 2010.

As every year, different drills are carried out throughout the Spanish peninsula and islands to provide the FWB Spain members with bigger skills for the rescue services. To achieve these projects, it is created a mobilization of different resources, whether humanitarian or material, as well as the structuring and learning of the tasks execution in compliance with all the State bodies and security forces. As a result, faults are found and rectified and new members of the future rescue teams are assessed at the same time.

EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI. 12th January, 2010

After the huge earthquake of 7.2 on the Richter scale and the constant aftershocks of magnitude 5 in the same scale that struck this side of the island, International Rescue teams begin to arrive to the zone to develop rescue services and a subsequent reconstruction.

GIRL RESCUED IN ALGERIA IN 2003

Rescue works carried out by FWB Spain members in Algeria.

MEDICAL ASSISTANCE PROJECT IN AFGHANISTAN

Today, we would like to share with you a photo album about the project we developed in Afghanistan. It was a Medical Assistance Project in cooperation with the NGO Doctors of the World Spain.
On 26th December 2003, the Citadel of Bam, the biggest mud brick complex of the world and the bigger part of the town of Bam, was seriously damaged by an earthquake of 6.6 on the Richter scale. BBC informed that 70% of the modern town of Bam had been devastated. According to different media reports, the first figures of death people fluctuated between 70,000 and 80,000

EARTHQUAKE IN PERU. AUGUST 2007.

The 2007 Peru earthquake was a seismic activity dated on 15th August that lasted for about three minutes. Its epicentre was located along the coast of Peru: 40km (25 mi) west of Chincha Alta and 150km (93 mi) southeast of Lima at a hypocentre depth of 39km (24 mi). It was one of the hardest earthquakes that Peru has ever experienced; the strongest one, too (according to intensity and duration of vibrations), but not the most catastrophic one if we compare it with the previous deadly earthquake in 1970 which produced thousands of deaths.
This earthquake of 7.9 in magnitude on the Richter scale caused 1,500 deaths, almost 2,291 victims, 76,000 destroyed and uninhabitable homes, and 431,000 people were affected by. The most affected areas were the following provinces: Pisco, Ica, Chincha, Cañete, Yauyos, Huaytará and Castrovirreyna.

ROAD ACCIDENTS

If you wanna take a look at other types of FWB Interventions, click on this link for the images of some Road Accidents.

HOW WAS CREATED FIREFIGHTERS WITHOUT BORDERS SPAIN?

In 1993, a group of professionals belonging to the Firefighters Corp of the Valencia Council asked the Valencian consistory for a Magirus fire engine dated from 1957, as a donation, given the fact that it went directly to the scrapyard.

Working with such a big enthusiasm and effort, this group adapted and repaired the Magirus for it to live its last big supportive adventure: going all over the immensity of the sub-Saharan desert to pay a visit to its counterparts in Burkina Faso (it carried food, medicines and school material) and discovering the reality of the Fire Stations in the Sahel region.

This first experience exceeded all the expectations. The Magirus not only complied with its purpose of sharing hope all over the sub-Saharan Africa desert, but kilometre after kilometre, it let this group of Valencian people open their eyes to a new reality: the need of projecting their solidarity beyond the limits of their professional action. From this day on, the NGO FIREFIGHTERS WITHOUT BORDERS SPAIN was born and continues to live for that trip not to be considered an isolated fact, and the Magirus became its emblem.

MISSION STATEMENT

FIREFIGHTERS WITHOUT BORDERS SPAIN (FWB SPAIN) is an NGO in favour of the solidarity and the support provided to the Development made up of career and volunteer firefighters from the Fire Extinction and Rescue Services and collaborators from other jobs, too, who share the following dedication of principles:
1. There is a wide range of personal and varied motivations for them to take part in the NGO, having as a binding site the belief that the training and the professional experience can help to the less privileged regions of the world.
2. They respect any kind of religious, ideological and political belief, but they do not submit to any of these, so the NGO FIREFIGHTERS WITHOUT BORDERS SPAIN declares itself APOLITICAL and ACONFESSIONAL.
3. This organization accepts the principle of FRATERNITY and COLLABORATION among all the people of the world, and it bases its help on objective criteria without preferences of any kind. This help can be developed to regional, national and international scale.
4. The help will be requested and completely accepted by the local population who will take part actively, in every moment, in the project development. The members of the NGO FIREFIGHTERS WITHOUT BORDERS SPAIN will not interfere in the local businesses of the region.
5. They will respect and appreciate the culture, the life style, the environment and the technology of the regions which are recipients of the help, adapting this one to the specific necessities of the place and adding their skills to the work they carry out. They promise to act as consciousness-raising elements of the situation of these regions in our society.
6. FWB Spain forms an autonomous association. It does not depend on any kind of pressure group, state, government, political or religious association, and any company or trade union, as well, both national and international scale.
7. FWB Spain will never render services to causes with military purposes or activities which infringe the environment or people’s dignity.
8. In an anonymous and volunteering way, the members of the NGO do not seek a prominent role with their actions and they do not pretend to get economical or professional benefits from this work. They control all risks derived from the projects they develop in other countries, and once they accept the mission, they commit themselves to carry it out from the beginning until the end. NGO funds will be exclusively used for its purposes.

A GRATITUDE LETTER FROM A SCHOOL IN PADANG

Translation of a letter received from a school in Padang, Indonesia.

Ampek Jirek, 12th October, 2009

On behalf of the School’s Director and the Teacher’s Board, as well as the School Committee, we would like to deeply thank: Firefighters Without Borders Spain and United Firefighters Without Borders Spain for the support and the help they gave us, because these ones had a core importance for our educational process, in order to improve our school system.

Ampek Jirek, 12th October, 2009

School’s Director 05/VII Koto

(Signature and Stamp of the Public Primary School 05, Padang Pariaman)

(Nurjani, A. Ma.Pd)

Government Employee Number 131140751

REMEMBERING HAITI

Last 12th June, it was the fifth month since a terrible earthquake devastated HAITI. Today, from the Galician office of FwB Spain, we want to remember that HAITI still needs our help. It cannot disappear into obscurity, because it will not be able to recover from that tragedy without counting on our assistance.

EVERYBODY WITH HAITI!!