Manila Fire Safety TrainingWhen I had my fire safty training a while ago, it was done in the carpark of the Isle of Man fire station in Douglas, with a bit of paper burning and everything nice and small. Turns out they do fire training different here – very different.

A big plume of smoke appeared from the building across the road earlier today and a few minutes later the local fire brigade appeared. Strangely, though, they only threw a bit of water in the general direction of the smoke and otherwise seemed pretty relaxed. A few minutes later an old cut up oil drum was placed in the middle of the street and some petrol was poured into it. The whole thing was then set alight and the residents of the building, by now all gathered outside, could have a go at extinguishing it.

Not satisfied with setting liters of petrol ablaze in the middle of a street (a street that wasn’t closed in any way – traffic just continued to flow past), a gas bottle was then produced and also set alight, again in the middle of the road, with cars and bikes happily driving by.

Turns out the whole thing was an exercise in fire safety for the residents and that’s simply how they do things here. Sure was realistic but I’m pretty certain the whole spectacle would have caused any UK H&S inspector to have a serious panic attack. Lucky there are none of those here then…