When an accident happens who do you call?

If you have ever had to ring fire/police/ambulance, you’ll perhaps agree that you have never been more dependent on someone else’s planning and ability to deliver a timely, effective and coordinated response. How do they do it?

I found some of the answers recently when I met a group of visitors from the UK Fire Service. They were in Macedonia with the UK-based charity Operation Florian. This was the latest in a series of visits in which they work should-to-shoulder with the Macedonian emergency services, sharing UK practice and their experience in emergencies.

Operation Florian has been working in Macedonia for almost a decade. It has, for both sides, been an adventurous and eventful journey. Their work ranges from training emergency services, through donation of equipment, to organising exercises for the Macedonian emergency services to practise their skills and learn new methods.

In the past year the team’s work has focused on introducing JESIP, the UK’s Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Programme. It is our approach to ensuring that, when an accident happens, the first service to arrive at the scene – whether police, fire or ambulance – will use the same model of response. This coordination is key in delivering the most efficient and effective approach at the accident scene. It saves lives.

This spring volunteers from Operation Florian, supported by a paramedic from the UK North West Ambulance Service and a former UK Police Officer, delivered three JESIP workshops in Valandovo, Tetovo and Skopje. The evaluation carried out after these workshops showed an improvement of over 20% in multi-agency working. This was confirmed the day after the Valandovo exercise when the lessons learned were successfully applied in handling a real incident.

But enough from me. You can listen to the personal testimonies of the Operation Florian team-members and hear why they are part of this adventure to support Macedonia.

Steve Jordan, Operations Manager, Operation Florian

Testimony of Adrian Brown, senior fire officer and national lead officer for incident command and the development of the JESIP principles at a national level.

Adrian Brown is explaining about the purpose and the work of Operation Florian in Macedonia:

Adrian Brown explaining the benefits of using JESIP in emergencies and how it improves response:

Adrian Brown shares initial impression of potential introduction of JESIP in Macedonia: