A veteran fire service instructor from Burton has landed a national award for his safety contributions during his career as he launches a campaign to provide fire safety tips across the world.
Benjamin Walker, has been nominated for two awards at the Excellence in Fire and Emergency Awards, and will travel to London on Friday, December 8 to receive them.
Mr Walker is an author of three best-selling safety and instructional books for firefighters, called 'Fire Dynamics for Firefighters', 'Reading Fire' and 'Fighting Fire'.
These books are used across the country to train all new firefighters and in another 53 countries across the world, which has seen Mr Walker receive nominations for 'training provider of the year' and 'international best practise'.
Now, Mr Walker has joined forces with Burton-based social media and technology company, Social Mimi, based on Guild Street, to make his training tips for firefighters available to others worldwide.
Social Mimi will help to create online training programmes which can be accessed and used across the world.
Benjamin Walker has spoken of his pride in working with the social media business to be able to broadcast his advice on a wider scale.
Mr Walker said: "It is really exciting to be able to work with Dan and his team at Social Mimi to be able to create these fully interactive packages which will enable firefighters in the third world to log on and access top class information, video and interactive training at a subsidised cost.
"This type of training isn't a replacement for hands-on training, but will certainly make a huge difference in educating and allowing firefighters to protect their communities better as a result whilst gaining a recognised qualification.
"We expect a huge take up globally which will allow us to subsidise this for nations and fire departments that are greatly under resourced and underfunded."
He has even issued a warning to those firefighters working in the United Kingdom, warning that as more pieces of technology become a mainstay in our homes, the more primary targets introduced when extinguishing a fire.
"Firefighting is a science, based on engineering principles and technical knowledge. In short that heat energy in a fire will require a certain amount of water flow to effectively extinguish it.
"The typical household now contains many more high energy items such as laptops, tablets, LCD TVs which require greater water flows to put out. This should be a primary factor in deciding strategic direction of British Fire Services."
