s
E ditor’
Note
W
e're finally here! I'm very pleased to say that
China Fire Bulletin (CFB) is now a reality.
CFB began as an fleeting thought back in 2011 with
my growing frustration of trying to build a successful
company in a market that does not necessarily reward
good engineering and user-orientated design goals, but
rather old school relationship building skills above all
else without much care to performance or quality at all.
As a firefighter, this greatly disturbs me.
All of the professional decisions that I had made up to
that point were in an orbit around several core concepts:
using the special skills god gave you to find success
in helping out your fellow humans, and that there are
certain things in life that must be committed to with
full effort, unrequited service, and without any sacrifice
of quality. These are some of the reasons that led me to
become a firefighter, and some of the motivations that
exist in my professional career.
As a fire fighter, you are trained to always watch the
back of your fire fighter brothers and sisters. Safety of
your team, your fellow fire fighters, is the most important
part of the job. This includes the decisions you make, the
equipment you use, and the skills you practice. My vision
for CFB is to create and sustain a platform that supports
and strengthens this concept, this culture, among all
firefighters and all stakeholders within the industry.
The situation now is simple. A relatively newly
established network of resellers, most with little or
no fire fighting experience, are responsible for the
communications, introduction and training on the
world's most innovative fire fighting tools, equipment,
and vehicles. The problem is most of them are severely
under-qualified to perform these tasks, which results
in one of several unsatisfactory realities, depending on
region:
1.A large inventory of subpar equipment at fire
6 CHINA FIRE BULLETIN
消防前沿
departments that does not allow the fire service to
perform to the best of their capabilities, despite better
value alternatives being available.
2."Special teams" purchasing high quality equipment,
but without sufficient professional training provided
by the local dealers, resulting in the fire fighters
insufficiently trained to use the equipment as intended by
the designers.
Fire fighting, after all, is about a balanced combination
of strategy and science. While equipment alone does
not create a better fire fighter, effective and innovative
tools can make the fire fighter a more effective and more
efficient soldier.
Many challenges exist in the future for those
committed to the modernization of the fire service, and
CFB is here to do its part.
We will remain committed to enhancing the training
quality of the industry and its stakeholders, providing
an independent third-party equipment review based
solely on the needs of the fire fighter, and ensuring all
equipment manufacturers and engineers have a chance to
communicate to their users directly.
Our mission is just beginning. I very much look
forward to growing together with you, our readers, and
doing our best to create an exciting environment for
learning about the leading-edge technologies and fire
fighting tactics from around the world.
Zachary E. Allen
Fire Fighter & Editor-in-Chief, China Fire Bulletin
China Fire Bulletin
June 2014