Rivco Firefighters Pitch in to Help Sister City
Riverside County firefighters are making Palm Desert’s sister city, Ixtapa-Zihuantanejo, Mexico, a safer place for both residents and tourists.
Returning this week along with his team of nine firefighters, Rivco Deputy Fire Chief Ignacio Otero says the annual training sessions are paying off with dramatic changes in the safety of the community.
This year’s fourth annual training session, partly funded by the Palm Desert Sister Cities Foundation, the Ixtapa-Zihuantanejo Sister Cities Committee, the City of Ixtapa-Zihuantanejo, the Ixt-Zih Hotel Association, and by the firefighters themselves, was designed to continue to ensure that the tourist destination is safe for Americans, other tourists, and the local residents.
A total of 184 students participated in this year’s training at a local hotel, and they learned skills such as first aid and CPR, proper use of ladders and hoses, elevator rescue, high-rise firefighting, wildland firefighting, forcible entry, and the Incident Command System.
“We proudly wear our department uniforms while attending the training,” said Otero. “We had so many positive comments from several American, Canadian and Mexican tourists.
“They were very happy that we were there, and they said that they felt safer knowing that we were there and training the local firefighters.”
Otero said they were even approached by a couple from Rancho Mirage, who wanted to take a picture with the firefighters.
Bit by bit over the last four years, the local fire crew has helped build the fire department into something the entire community is proud of—and that’s not all.
The Sister Cities Foundation has donated medical equipment, hospital beds, wheel chairs and walkers in order to help make the small hospital in the community functional, and they also started a lifeguard program a couple of years ago. The result of the lifeguard program is that the community is now the only destination in Mexico which has been certified as a “Safe Beaches” city by an international organization that certifies beaches.
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