Photo Features
Duty behind gates
Photo and text by Jiang Fan, Joey Wong, Li Ching-luen & Vivien Liu
Painted with a big white sign "Keep Clear" on its red gate, a fire station is uninviting to the public. Many people even have an impression that firefighters simply play volleyball inside the station all the time when they are not fighting a blaze.
Senior fireman Li Kei-kit is baffled by the public misunderstanding.
"Some people think firefighters can be very relaxing when they don't have to put out a fire," Li said.
"They think we
have nothing to do but play volleyball."
The 46-year-old officer at the Tung Lo
Wan Fire Station in Causeway Bay
explained that doing the sport, in fact, was
to boost team spirit and cooperation
among the members as well as to maintain
their physical strength.
"It is like training the soldiers for a thousand days and deploying them for one time," Li said.
As no one can predict when there will
be an emergency call or an accident, andbe prepared and well-trained to meet the
challenges.
Once the alarm rings, firefighters have to arrive
at the scene within six minutes.
In order to move quickly and not to affect
their respiratory systems for the rescue, firefighters
will slide down the poles instead of running down
the stairs to get ready to rush to the scene.
But the work of firefighters is more than putting out a fire. From time to time, they have to rescue people, who may be trapped in an accident or trying to kill themselves, and to handle leakage of inflammable or toxic chemicals.
Lee Ship, the only woman officer at the Tung
Lo Wan station, said she once had to stay with a
man who had a steel bar inserted through his head
from left to right in a car accident until doctors
arrived at the scene to make sure the man's
condition would not be affected by cutting off
the bar. Even though finally that man was still
physically alive, his brain was already dead, she
said.
But in some other occasions, firefighters are called into action to deal with unconventional missions, such as picking up dead birds in cases related to the avian influenza scare or breaking into a flat to save animals trapped inside, the firefighters said.
