What is a GlobalFire Supply and Distribution Operation?

Fire fighting, rescue, emergency medical and hazardous material response are dangerous and complex subjects that require specific equipment.  Financial realities in the developing world have resulted in many countries whose emergency services lack operating budgets that are able to bear the cost of acquiring the equipment needed to safely and effectively perform the job.  There are tens of thousands of emergency services that simply “make do” with what little they have at hand.  In case of a fire department, this often results in the loss of civilian lives that would otherwise have been preventable, as well as increased incidents of lethal cancers among Firefighters from exposure to toxic smoke.  

In an effort to help mitigate the deficit of specialized equipment that Firefighters and Paramedics in the developing world are forced to work with, GlobalFire gathers fire, rescue, emergency medical and hazardous materials protective equipment; tools and vehicles from across North America.  Often the supplies gathered are being decommissioned by a North American emergency service in favor of a newer version of the same item.  As equipment in North America meets the end of its lifetime, it can still find use with an impoverished emergency service somewhere in the global community.  

The items given to GlobalFire are inspected, serviced, shipped and then freely distributed to poor emergency services around the world.  
As GlobalFire’s reputation as an aid agency grew, emergency service supplies began to be donated to our charity at a rate faster than we could move the items in conjunction with a training operation.  See our “Capacity Building Operation” (CBO) description page for more information on these types of joint supply and training missions.  It takes many months to arrange a CBO due to the massive amount of coordination required.  To more quickly get the aid shipped and distributed, a new type of GlobalFire Operation was created: the “Supply and Distribution Operation” (SDO).  The SDO is intended to get the materials required by emergency service departments around the world to them in a more rapid manor.  To facilitate speed, a local emergency service’s equipment request will be matched as closely as possible and the materials will be shipped in conjunction with training materials where required.
As with ALL of GF’s activities, SDO’s are totally free of charge for the recipients.