Industry Meets To Discuss Ways To Safely, Efficiently Battle Blazes

Organizers say the Aerial Firefighting Conference 2008, which took place in Athens, Greece on October 22-23, was highly successful. Organized by Tangent Link Ltd, the first annual conference was attended by twenty-two nations.

The conference was chaired by Johann Goldhammer of the Global Fire Monitoring Center and Rear Admiral Terry Loughran. The agenda included fixed and rotary winged operations, safety, management and technologies; subjects which dominated the vibrant conference.

Many interagency meetings ensued to discuss and debate how to tackle wildfires from the air and how international aerial fire fighting management organizations can improve and share their knowledge and systems. An exhibition of some of the worlds' leading operators and suppliers was held simultaneously; the exhibition drew considerable interest from the delegates and provided a focal point for many of the accompanying discussions.

Panel sessions took place on Air Pollution from Aerial Firefighting and a debate was hosted by Chris Allen from the EU-Civil Protection Directorate on whether Europe should finance a cross-border aerial fire fighting squadron. Leading exponents took part in the debate including Tom Harbour, Director, Aviation United States Forest Service (USFS, USA), Shane Fitzsimmonds, Commissioner NSW Rural Fire Service (Australia), Dave Bokovay, Aviation Manager CIFFC (Canada) and Colonel Fernando Pastor Villar, Commander 43rd Group Spanish Air Force (Spain).

Two new upcoming events were announced at the conference. The Aerial Firefighting USA Conference is scheduled to take place in Anaheim, CA on February 19-20, 2009 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. The event is supported by UN-ISDR and the Global Fire Monitoring Center, and sponsored by Bombardier.

The second event is a one-day Aerial Firefighting Australasia Conference taking place in conjunction with the New South Wales Rural Fire Services' "International Wildfire Management Conference 2009" taking place in Sydney, Australia -- the largest fire fighting management event of its kind in the Australasia region.

FMI: www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/