Slide presenting Milan Dubravac as the new CTIF president from 2020

28 Oct 2020

DA 2020: Acceptance Speech of Milan Dubravac, new CTIF President

CTIF Activity Reports and News from our Commissions, Executive Committee and Working Groups

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

Good afternoon,

Dear delegates, thank you very much for your votes and for choosing me to serve you as president. Being a president of CTIF world largest firefighters association is a great honor for me and I accept that.

I would also like to thank to the Fire Association of Slovenia who nominated me. I believe it is also a great honor for my small country, not so small when we talk about firefighting.

Then I would like to say many thanks for all the work in past 8 years to Tore Eriksson. His energy and enthusiasm through his mandates really motivated all of us who worked with him. Thank you Tore and I hope also in the future you will be available and let us to learn from you.

I wish that also the new EC will continue good work in the future.

All we delegates here today are representing a special group of people, firefighters - rescuers. Why are we such a special group of people?... The last few years I traveled a lot, I visited more then 50 countries and if you are firefighter you are always interested to visit other firefighters. And my experience is that wherever I stepped into a fire station and I said I am a firefighter from Slovenia they immediately accepted me... That's why I think we are special group of people.

The role of national representatives in each country is to support firefighters on local level. The fact is that in the majority of countries, the fire service is organized locally. With support I mean knowledge about everything needed for their work (technical, lessons learned...), legislation, administrative barriers, status...

I see a similar role for CTIF on an international level. And in fact that is what we do in our commissions and working groups. We share knowledge, lessons learned, experience, new ideas... I think that is the right way and we should continue and try to extend this work.

CTIF covers very wide spectrum of activities and topics. There is no similar international firefighting association in the world. We are all the time open for new ideas and suggestions if there is an interest from member countries.

The challenge we have for the future is how to spread our results to as many firefighters as possible.

I assure you that in my mandate I will work in favor of all firefighters. All around the world, nowadays firefighters are the real heroes.

My vision

CTIF is a fire association with 120 years of tradition. The main purpose for starting the organisation in 1900 was to exchange knowledge among firefighters around the world. CTIF developed and survive till today, having become an organisation with a wide spectrum of activities. Our most important work is done in Commissions and working groups. Each CTIF member can join and exchange experience, knowledge and views within all working groups and contribute to all firefighting society worldwide.

My vision is to support further development and all good work done in commissions and working groups and to see how to improve cooperation and communication within CTIF members in the future even more.

One very important task for CTIF in the future is how to find ways of distributing all the knowledge our working bodies are producing to all firefighters in most effective way.

That will also ensure safer work to all our colleagues around the world.

I will also support all cooperation with other international organisations worldwide.

Firefighters around the world are facing new challenges every day. Technical development and climate changes are bringing new priorities and risks to firefighting work. Therefore it is even more important that we try to empower exchange of firefighting experience between different parts of the world and consequently serve to our societies as they expect.

CV OF THE NEW PRESIDENT

My name is Milan Dubravac from Slovenia. I am 53 years old.

I joined the voluntary fire service as a young boy at the age of 8. So I am member of voluntary fire service for 45 years!

Professional Operational fire fighting 1987-1991

Professional Fire Officer 1991-2006

Head of National firefighting school Slovenia 2006-2015

Airport Fire Chief 2015-2019

Member of national firefighting Commander board for 13 years

Regional Commander for of volunteer fire fighting 15 years

National HazMat commission chairman from 2001 till 2011

EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) regional Commander 7 years

Experienced in disaster management and operational planning.