The Digital Dental Surgeon

Today I’m out of the office. Six of us were selected to be the people responsible during fire drills and, God forbid, actual emergency cases involving fire in the office. We had a crash course on the handling of fire extinguishers and deployment of fire hoses during the event of a fire.

We arrived around 8.45 in the morning, with the course to start at 9. We had stuffed ourselves with a couple of kuih-muih prior to departing for the Putrajaya Bomba HQ unknowingly that they will be serving quite a hearty breakfast and 10 o’clock tea. The course started off with simple theory of handling and mechanics of the fire extinguishers and them heavy fire hoses. Heavy I had thought, and got much heavier once water is put through the hoses.

The morning till noon session were not stressful, more like a walk in the park. We did not start the heavy physical exercise until after lunch and Zohor. Expecting to be tortured physically throughout the day, we were quite physically unchallenged. We were told that the group that attended the same course yesterday were quite timid and did not participate that much during the physical sessions, hence the Bomba decided to start later in the day.

Much to their miscalculation, our group were eager to handle the fire fighting equipment. We got to unfurl the hoses, shoot powerful jets of water and of course release some dry powder and carbon dioxide fire extinguishers. Men behaved like gleeful little children for that moment, perhaps a childhood dream come true.

Before that, we got a tour of the Bomba facility. We got to ride on Bomba bikes (stationary of course), jump in and out of the fire engines (my childhood dream did come true!) and gawk at the cutting equipment etc.

The physical work of Bomba is really taxing for the body, especially when many of us are unfit and with our potbelllies hanging shamelessly. We not only had some training in putting out fires, but had a glimpse and appreciation of the work Bombas do.

Some of the pictures during the course.

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