IBEW Wiremen Power Up Bangladeshi Hospital
May 25, 2010
Collinsville, Ill., Local 309 member Bob Frisse is known for his using his electrical skills to help local families in need. But last February, he got an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put his training and expertise to work helping a nation halfway across the planet.
Last Christmas, fellow Local 309 member Steve Bendick asked Frisse to accompany him to the jungles of Bangladesh – a small nation in South Asia – to make some needed repairs at a Memorial Christian Hospital, a charitable hospital that provides urgent medical care to some of that country’s neediest families.
Bendick is a longtime friend of Dr. Steven Kelly, a surgeon who works at the hospital who was in immediate need of professional electricians.
Bangladesh’s national power grid is notoriously unreliable, with blackouts occurring sometimes up to 10 times a day or more. The hospital uses two generators for backup, but the frequent power failures burned out its automatic transfer switches.
“They had a guy manually switching the power to the generator whenever the grid went down,” Frisse said. “He had to stick his hand into the generator to do it, which isn’t too safe.”
Bendick – who had first traveled to Bangladesh to work on the hospital a decade ago – volunteered to help, but he didn’t want to make the trip alone.
Despite the last minute request, Frisse didn’t think twice about going. But he had less than a month to raise money, get his passport renewed and schedule immunization shots, before leaving on the 30-hour flight to Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital.
“It was a wild experience,” Frisse said. “I never thought I would be in a situation where I was rushing off to Bangladesh.”
They both did some last-minute fundraising through their churches and families to purchase tickets and tools they needed.
Bendick and Frisse say they are particularly grateful for all the support they got from the local and their employer, Guarantee Electric, which donated tools and new transfer switches.
Getting the equipment through customs was the biggest challenge. Bendick’s greatest fear was that custom officials would seize it to sell on the black market.
But they encountered no problems. After their arrival, they took a bumpy two-hour bus ride to reach to the seaside town of Malumghat, located near the Bay of Bengal. The hospital is located on a 44-acre tract of land nearby.
Electrical and safety standards are nearly nonexistent in Bangladesh and the generator was archaic by North American standards.
“You’re trying to make things work that back in the U.S. you would say is impossible, but over there you had no other option but to try to make it work,” Frisse said.
But with some help from local Bangladeshis, Bendick and Frisse got the transfer switches installed and running after 10 days.
Bendick says that it’s a tribute to the IBEW and the NJATC that his skills and experience could be put to good use helping empower a struggling Third World nation. “It’s good to know that, just like doctors and nurses, we have skills that can be used toward helping those in need,” he said.
Bangladesh, which is almost totally surrounded by neighboring India, is one of the most densely populated nations in the world. It is also one of the poorest, having suffered from war, natural disasters and overpopulation since its founding in 1971.
“I know at lot of people are struggling here at home, but after going over there and seeing what people in Bangladesh have to deal with every day, I feel blessed to have what I have,” Frisse said.