The worm is in the fruit....

With 2 children, running my own business, completing a degree and a dog that always seems to need a wee at 3am the total hours of sleep I have achieved in the past year is about the same as my age.

Therefore, it was with slight dread I dragged myself out of bed to navigate my way through rush hour traffic in Perth to attend a full day seminar about the Paris Terror Attacks.

Sponsored by AFAC and Motorola the seminar was presented by Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud - Commander of the Paris Fire Brigade. The first portion of the day was a 90-minute presentation by him.

I didn’t fancy his chances at making me stay awake the entire time as I settled into my slightly uncomfortable chair drinking my instant coffee. However, it very quickly evident that I was about to spend the next 90 minutes completely engaged in what he had to say. So much so that at the end of the day I found myself with 25 pages of handwritten notes, easily enough for quite a few blog entries.

I’ve always had a certain affection for France. Prior to emigrating to Australia my husband and I actually spent time there scouting for homes with a view to settling into the French way of life. So with sadness, I watched the terror unfold on November 13, 2015. Within the space of 40 minutes, 7 terrorist attacks were carried out in Paris. Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud was in charge of the response by Paris Fire Brigade.

I have broken down my notes into three blog entries due to volume. Firstly, some background information.

Western Australia is over 5 times the size of France. France has 250,000 firefighters of which 38,000 are professional, 200,000 are volunteers and 12,000 are military. The average age of firefighters is 28. The brigade was established on Sept 18, 1811, by Napoleon with only 500 firefighters. The structure has not changed.

The Paris brigade covers an area of 40km by 35km. It has 3 international airports within its boundaries, which combined, have 65 million visitors per year. Over 7 million people live in the area with 2 million more commuting daily. Paris has 45 million tourists per year and is responsible for 25% of French GDP.

The area covers area 75 (Paris) and three surrounding precincts (93,94,92). There are also two detachments. One in Biscarrosse (missile defence area) with 85 firefighters and Kourou in South America (based on space program) with 85 firefighters. There are 76 fire stations in total. Within a 10km radius, there is 1 fire station in order to keep response time to less than 10 minutes. As a rule, they turn out 2 pumps and 1 ladder.

For the three areas, each area also has a tactical command post and medical support team attached. There are 60 doctors in the brigade with 45 having a military background. This includes experience with bullet wounds and combat situations.

The brigade deals with 2 million calls per year. There were 450,510 incidents in 2015 with an average of 1,250 operations per day. An average 40-50 per day were fire related with 50% of these being classified as building fires.

Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud commented that when we look back 20 years ago the calculation of risk was very different. Today the threat is different – we need to study and adapt our emergency management methodologies like the terrorists. France is high on the Global Terrorism Index and as perfectly described by the Commander – “ the worm is in the fruit” meaning the terrorists are already deeply embedded within french society.

Part Two soon….