Safety matters

Richard Carroll stresses the importance of preparation when it comes to the emergency services. Here the action man tells Laura Collacott how to deal with a high-rise fire and why safety has to become a priority for Middle East governments.

Richard Carroll is a confident businessman with an encyclopaedic knowledge of his field. At our meeting he amiably greets me with a firm handshake and immediately begins to recount anecdotes from his extensive experience in the emergency services.

Aside from being a fully trained paramedic, he is also an experienced fire fighter: "I have 26 years in the fire service in Florida; retired as a battalion chief.

I have a Bachelor's in fire and safety engineering and a Master's in business - don't ask me why I got the Master in business!" he jokes. But it is this rich service history combined with the business acumen of his MA that led him to set up his pioneering enterprise, Emergency Response Specialists (ERS).

The company provides emergency training in all three disciplines to a wide variety of organisations (police agencies, fire departments, medical response teams, malls and large private developments, among others) under one convenient umbrella.

Having been invited to train a group of Iraqi servicemen in Bahrain, Carroll realised that there was a niche market to be exploited in assessing the gaps in emergency service provisions here in the Middle East and providing training to fill them.

Every resident and tourist in any area has the right to expect a level of emergency services consistent with the highest international protocols," declares the ERS website.

Not only is this necessary for the wellbeing and reassurance of the general public, Carroll also argues that being adequately prepared makes good business sense. "Because of the BBC and CNN, any man-made or natural disaster is on live TV in five minutes, whether it's a fire on the 40th floor, hostage situation, 20-car pile up, plane crash, whatever," he says.

For this reason, if nations are not prepared with highly skilled and trained emergency individuals, it could cost them tourism and business: They're not going to come if they don't feel safe."

His is a revised form of the training format more common in the Gulf. "On this side of the world, typically they send two people abroad for training and hope they bring back that knowledge to others," he elaborates. "But they'll train on equipment that they don't have and then come back. That's just not cost effective.

To further illustrate his point, Carroll uses an analogy: "It does no good for me to bring you a Cadillac, train your people to drive the Cadillac and then take the Cadillac away. I come in and [train you in] whatever you have; if you have a VW then I'll make your people the best VW drivers in the world.

Carroll carries out a detailed assessment at the outset of any new contracts. "I come to your country to do an assessment, whether it's police, fire, medical or all three disciplines and in that assessment I make recommendations of equipment prior to our training.

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