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The lonely firefighters

Quite offten we can see firefighters who are fighting the firestorm and stand against it alone, but surounded by at least two or three fire trucks.

Have you ever wondered what is due to the fact that the number of firefighters is equal to the number of firefighting vehicles?

The one reason is that firefighters are few and insufficient.

The other reason is much more terrible and caused by regulatory gaps and the lack of a defined minimum number of firefighters in the team. The acceptance of a minimum number of firefighters in the team is postponed till August 2017.

In this same regulation it is precised that in indoor’ accidents, the team of firefighter and driver / most common practice / must wait for another team before entering the burning building. This puts the first team /firefighter and the driver/ in in deadlock: to get help to the victims or to wait for help, about 15-20 minutes in the big cities and much longer in small where help can come only from the distanced towns. The exception rather than practice is three or four firefighters to be on shift and this is the number of all firefighters on shift in some major cities.

In small towns the situation is much worse.
The next time you see firefighters standing in front of a burning building who are not entering to extinguish the fire, please do not be angry at them, but the system which allows this to happen.
The next time when you hear about the injured firefighter, remember that very often it happened, because at the signal responded two firefighters – one entered alone in the burning building, because other had to stand outside and to ensure him a water. There is not a third.
Photographer: Silva Toneva

firefighter Silva