PEOPLE often say that ‘charity begins at home’, this principle is also applicable when it comes to fire safety.
Over the past five years, the State Fire and Rescue Department (Bomba Sarawak) has made it its mission to create champions among the community in Sarawak when it comes to fire safety.
Despite being the largest state in Malaysia, Sarawak has only 39 fire stations spread out across seven zones.
Given this scenario, it is impossible for the department to deliver services within the target 10 minutes response time.
Director Datuk Khirudin Drahman said the community fire brigade programme known as Bomba Komuniti was introduced in Sarawak to overcome this challenge.
He said the programme continues to be a success as there are over 188 teams with 2,138 members thus far.
“We introduced this programme to make sure that the community becomes part and parcel of our 3P (precaution, protection, and prevention) approach. Fire usually starts out as small and the first five minutes is very critical.
“If the community can respond very well with basic firefighting knowledge and equipment like portable fire extinguishers, it is good enough as they can extinguish the fire before it grows.
“It becomes a problem when they become spectators and tengok saja (look only) because the most important thing in the event of a fire is the reaction towards preventing it from spreading,” he told New Sarawak Tribune.
Khirudin explained that Bomba Komuniti is the easiest way to form a local fire brigade in the community compared to Pasukan Bomba Sukarela (PBS) or auxiliary firefighter team.
He said forming a PBS would require registration with the Registrar of Societies (ROS) and involve several processes.
“The objective of Bomba Komuniti is to make sure the people become local champions. The members will be given training, and we also incorporate our Celik SURI (Sedia Urus Risiko Isirumah) for the women.
“Women play equally important roles when it comes to fire safety. Most of the time during fire investigation, we found that women were at home during fire incidents, but they panicked and were not able to respond accordingly,” he said.
Recalling when he was first posted to Sarawak in 2018, Khirudin said he wanted to give emphasis to education out of the 5E components.
He said the Bomba Komuniti programme among others has enabled the department to actively educate the community in every corner of Sarawak on fire safety.
“In Sarawak, we are very lucky that the people are willing to learn and welcome our personnel with open arms whenever we conduct or organise programmes with the community.
“This is important because they are also doing their part in helping the state government in dissemination of information to their respective communities,” he said,
Khirudin said the Bomba Komuniti programme creates a sense of belonging and fosters stronger ties among the community members as they grasp the fact that fire safety is a share responsibility.
At the same time, he said elected local representatives can do their part by channeling their Minor Rural Project (MRP) funding to support the community’s involvement in the Bomba Komuniti programme.
“The support of elected local representatives is very important. The department is often asked ‘when will we have a fire station at our area?’ but there are many factors to take into consideration and it is not cheap to operate a fire station.
“That is why we came up with the Bomba Komuniti programme so that we can educate and equip the local community with the right firefighting knowledge so they can contribute better to the safety of their respective communities and look after their properties,” he said.
