News

Civil protection programme seminar in Lebanon addresses investigation of fire causes

05-04-2012

 

Twenty Lebanese fire-fighters and Italian experts from Fire-fighters and Forest Corps gathered in Beirut from 28 March to 1 April to discuss and learn how to examine a fire scene, collect evidence, make hypotheses on the causes of fire and simulate fire scenarios, during a training course organised by the EU-funded civil protection project PPRD South.
 
The training course addressed new techniques and tools for investigating causes of fires. Participants explored software-based techniques for the simulation of fire in confined spaces such as the use of virtual fire rooms created through digital pictures taken on a fire scene. These help simulate what has happened on the basis of available evidences.
 
“Developing Lebanese fire-fighters’ investigation skills is essential,” says Nabil Salhani, Director of the Training Department in the Lebanese Civil Defence. “Ensuring that police are adequately assisted in apprehending the perpetrators of malicious firing is important as it is to determine the origin and causes of all fire incidents to permit Civil Defence dispose of proper fire statistics and find out where fire prevention measures are most necessary around the country.”
 
The training sought to guide the fire-fighters through the various stages of a fire investigation in open or confined spaces, from field survey to interviewing eye witnesses, from locating the fire source to collection, evaluation of evidence and preparation of a report. A field exercise was held in a forest area recently affected by a wildfire during which participants had to simulate a complete fire investigation process.
 
The €5 million PPRD South Programme (Programme for Prevention, Preparedness and Response to Natural and Man-made Disasters) – which runs for three years and is managed by a consortium led by the Italian Civil Protection Department together with the French, Algerian, Egyptian Civil Protection Authorities and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) – is also organising training workshops dealing with risks in the region such as wild fires, technological disasters, floods, earthquakes, epidemics and drought, among others.  (ENPI Info Centre)
 
Read more
 
Press release
 
PPRD South – fiche and news  
 
PPRD South – website
 

 


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