THE NORWEGIAN ASSOCIATION OF FIRE OFFICERS (NBLF)

Founded: 17 March 1979
Number of members: 1 640

Category of members:
Fire brigade officers of any kind, from brigades of any type. The association is open for other members with profession close to fire-brigades, such as leaders of industrial professional brigades. It is also possible to be a support-member.

Organisation:
The Association is ruled by a board of 9 members, elected on the General Meeting every second Year.
The Members are members in regional divisions, of which there are 16, almost covering the country. The regional divisions send representatives to the General Meeting.

Economy:
The Members pay a yearly sub ion fee of NOK 150,-. Other income is a project-based agreement about fire prevention activities with an insurance company and small income from internet-advertising.
The Association is not given any kind of support from the Government or other public authorities. At present time the economy is fairly good.

Internet: www.nblf.no
Homepage continuously updated, contenting news, vocabulary, links, minutes from meetings, “Sunshine Stories”, etc. Internet is NBLFs organising tool, including database of regional divisions, members, e-mailadresses, e-mailbased magazine.

Main working area:
In many ways the Association has been the "spokesman" for the fire brigades in Norway in fire-technical matters. In recent years we have been working hard to get the education of the fire fighters, the leaders and the fire-prevention personal to a higher level.
There are a lot of changing of rules and organisations in all parts of our working area going on, in which NBLF have been heavily involved for a long time.

Contact with the Authorities:
The Association have fairly good contact with the Norwegian Directorate of Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (DSB) we are still building up contact with the political part of our authorities.

Travel grants:
NBLF with support from DSB, gives two travel grants yearly. They are open for members that want to study different subjects with the overall goal to increase the quality of the Norwegian fire service.

National projects:
“Sunshine-stories”
As a part of the agreement with the insurance company, members shall report “sunshine-stories”. We try to make the fire statistics upside down, and collect fires that has remained small because fire prevention initiatives that have functioned well. The reporting is done directly on internet.

Terminology
Parallel with an on-going work with an European and Nordic terminology, NBLF try to develop a Norwegian fire terminology. The work is done together with our national authorities, fire schools and universities, standardisation organisation etc., but is moving very slowly.

Organisation
There is at European level going on a development of a common way of looking at organising rescue operations. In Norway we need the same debate and we are in the need of standards for how to escalate organisation. NBLF have taken initiative in that direction.