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THE ARMED SERVICES AND AUXILIARY SERVICES

Members carry out weekly training and stand by at various fire stations each weekend for operational experience. They are frequently called upon to reinforce the professional Fire Service during major fires and natural disasters such as typhoons and landslides. The training and equipping of the service is now directed towards making the auxiliaries as far as practicable interchangeable with the professional members of the Fire Service during wide-scale emergencies.

The Auxiliary Medical Service, with a strength of 5,000, is partly an emergency reinforcement unit for the Medical and Health Department. The members are trained to reinforce the major government and private hospitals so that in an emergency they can deal with an increased number of acute casualties. The service is also ready to set up and staff relief hospitals, to which less serious and convalescent cases may be removed, while other members are allocated for duties at dressing stations (mainly at existing clinics) where minor injuries and normal daily sick persons would be treated. Those earmarked for hospitals and dressing station duties-auxiliary nurses and auxiliary dressers-carry out annual training in the wards and casualty departments of hospitals. The ambulance mem- bers of the service, under the operational command of the Director of Fire Services, provide reinforcement for the regular Ambulance Service with drivers, ambulance members and RT/telephone opera- tors and provide mobile first-aid parties to work with rescue services. The ambulance members carry out regular weekly training in first- aid, life saving and light rescue.

The Auxiliary Medical Service reported for duty at the scenes of large fires, and auxiliary nurses assisted with the Colony anti- cholera inoculation campaign. First-aid and life saving training by the service is very popular with younger members of the community, who are trained to render assistance in their own areas and in apart- ment buildings in cases of street and domestic accidents.

The Civil Aid Services, formed in 1951 and with a present active strength of some 5,000 volunteers, developed originally from the wartime Air Raid Warden Service. They are now used to support and supplement government services in any form of natural disaster, particularly typhoons, fires, floods and landslides. The organization extends over a number of zones which cover all parts of the urban area, and members generally have a strong sense of local identity.