The Brigade Today

The Brigade As It Was

The members of the St. Georges Fire Brigade where all volunteers except for the Chief. We meet every Tuesday night at 19:30 - 21:30 for training. In our training sessions we did a lot of different things. Some nights we had lectures or drills, on both new and old skills. On other nights we maintained our Station and the Vehicles. We also go out and meet the public, do preplans, check fire hydrants, visit places of interest such as Bermuda Radio, St. Peters Church and other historic buildings. As a Heritage Town it was important for us to be very familiar with St. George's and its residents.
We did not have a permanent crew in our station like that of the career stations of the Bermuda Fire Service. We where often ask how do we know when we where going to be needed? The system was very easy, all 911 emergency call for ambulance or fire were received by a central dispatcher, which was operated by The Bermuda Fire Service. Here the dispatchers answer the 911 phones and ask the nature of the call, the address, the callers name and where they are calling from. These dispatchers then activate our members pagers, if the call were with in our area, and relay the necessary information to us. Our first truck is out of the station with with five minutes. A lot of the time we would have a truck on the road with in less than one minute of receiving the call. In times of potent ional need such as hurricanes we would have had at least one or two crews in the station. A good example of this was Hurricane Fabian. Also we borrowed an ambulance and a driver from St. John Ambulance, they were also a volunteer EMS organization.

Here is our sleeping quarters in Fabian. Our Kitchen no electric. How's Dinner ? EMS Ambulance from St. John Ambulance

One of the many visitors during Hurricane Fabian. Where the bridge? I want to go home. Fabian during the hurricane eye.

Our members where qualified to, fight aircraft fires, E.M.T.'s, (Basic and Intermediate), C.P.R. Instructors, Fire Fighter I and II, Advanced Basic Trauma Life Support Instructor, I.S.I. Breathing Apparatus Technicians Levels I, II, and III, Pediatric Trauma Life Support Instructor. We encouraged our members to advance them selves by sending them to Virginia EMS Conference and to participate in ride alongs and trains with other EMS and Fire Fighters in Virginia. We have also sent members to Persian and Borden in Canada to due aircraft fire fighting. The Brigade also has qualified Pan-American Disaster Instructors.
Our Station was open Monday to Friday 8:00 am to 4:30 pm. Also Tuesday nights before and after training. On many week end you would find members in the station doing odd jobs and members would be more than will to answer your questions? New members were always welcome. We had our own Chief. Our Basic Fire Fighting Course use to begin in September