Still, Does Anybody Care About the Firefighters?

The firefighters’ weapon seems to be cursed. It does not seem to be God’s will for this institution to be run by a non-acting commander who should last long enough. Finally, on Friday, January 17th, after months of waiting, one-star brigadier general Ion Burlui PhD had been appointed as general inspector. Soon after that, on Wednesday 22nd January, he tendered his resignation . Obviously, up to now (i.e. Wednesday, January 22nd, 23:49), none of the involved institutions has issued an official statement related to general Burlui’s resignation or regarding a possible successor in commanding the Romanian firefighters.

Five days lasted the „mandate” of the firefighters’ first in command who had a potential of stability: appointment by the prime-minister, passed exam on the respective job. Personally, I confess that, probably like many others, I feel a great disappointment because, whether we like it or not, this resignation leaves the firefighters once again to a wave of interims at the politicians’ disposal.

The tragic accident was so intensely tackled by the media that no one noticed, or did not want to, that everything turned into a witch hunt where it is hard to tell between the hunt for rating or the wish to punsih the guilty ones. Probably the pain of the grieving families is going to be just as intensely exploited.

All this time, I haven’t heard anybody say anything about the firefighters who worked on this mission. I have never heard anybody admit the merits of the 70 military firefighters with the Inspectorates for Emergency Situations from Cluj, Bihor, Mureș and Alba counties. Those men had not been in the mountains for relaxation, but, many of them, were brought there in their free time to take part in the search and rescue mission. They had been walking for hours in cold, snow, rain, haze, darkness, in bad weather, in order to find the plane wreckage and rescue the passangers. And it was not their fault that the „experts” with the authorised institutions played „hide-and-seek” with the victims’ life.

No one seems to have noticed that these men, the firefighters, while the TV channels showed ceaselessly breaking news about new resignations and relegations, they continued with great responsibility their everyday difficult activity: extinguishing tens of fires, weighing in tens of car crashes, giving first aid to hundreds of people, rescuing cattle, they did what they did best: protecting life. Does anybody care about them ?