NATIONAL POST: Front Section A9
October 10, 2002 Issue

FIREFIGHTERS HEAD TO PERU ON MISSION OF MERCY
In Memory Of Comrade

By Joseph Brean

A group of Mississauga firefighters is gearing up to equip and train a poor South American fire department in honour of a fallen colleague.

Firefighters Without Borders, as the group is being called, will leave next week for a small town outside of Lima, Peru, bearing gifts of helmets, boots, protective clothing and hoses. The five men of Pumper 114, a crew trained in technical rescue and hazardous materials, will stay to give their Peruvian counterparts training in vehicle extrication and containing oil spills, and donate several Spanish language copies of a safety program for children called Learn Not to Burn.

The town of 150,000, which is served by 53 poorly trained firefighters spread dangerously thin, was devastated recently when children playing with flammable liquids ignited a fire that destroyed 200 homes in 20 minutes. ''On their own dime they're going down there,'' said Norman Traversy of the Mississauga Fire Department. ''It's costing them thousands personally, and they're going on their time off.''

The idea for the public service, which the crew modelled after Doctors Without Borders and hopes will be adopted by other Canadian fire houses, came from World Vision, a charitable organization for which Kevin Bailey, a former member of Pumper 114, once did volunteer work.

Mr. Bailey was killed in February when a wall of ice he was climbing broke lose and fell on him during a recreational trip to the Adirondack mountains in New York. He left a fiancee whom he planned to marry in May. ''Everybody took it very hard,'' deputy fire chief John McDougall said at the time. ''They are a pretty young group and very close-knit.''

The men, Al Hills, Andrew Melville, Tom Gojak, Aron Reppington and Jamie Stark, had been doing volunteer work even before Mr. Bailey's death, but the tragedy gave them a resolve to do more, said Capt. Hills.

After the accident, ''our crew had a lot more resolve to do a community outreach project and keep on the excitement and the dream that Kevin had, so we went back to World Vision [a charity through which the crew already sponsored children in poor countries] and they said there's a community in Ventanilla, just outside of Lima, Peru,'' he said. ''So they asked us, how would you like to go down there?''

Knowing that a trip to Ventanilla would mean the chance to meet three of their sponsored children who live there, they kicked off a fundraising drive that drummed up protective suits from the City of Mississauga, hoses, nozzles and helmets from Guelph, and $50,000 for some of their travel arrangements from Eldertreks, an adventure travel company in Toronto.

''I got a call from the Mayor of the Town of Erin last night at home, and he said, ''We've got a fire truck that we could possibly donate, but we can't afford to ship it down there,'' Mr. Traversy said. Capt. Hills said there will be a fundraising drive on their return to raise the money for shipping the truck to the town.

© Copyright 2002 National Post

Firefighters, from left:
Tom Gojak, Aron Reppington Andrew Melville, and Al Hills

For more information about the Firefighters' Mission of Mercy to Peru, click here:

New Vision story
Childview story