By hunting Arafat down, Cioloş has set his sidekicks on the firefighters!

Since the intervention at Colectiv, almost five months have passed. In the first three days, the intervention was considered a success, and the firefighters, heroes of a tragedy that everyone promised to offer therapy support to so that they could recover much easier from the horrors witnessed on that night.

Subsequently, some considered it to be a good opportunity to misuse the tragedy of so many people, of the carnage at Colectiv, in order to change an incompetent Government…with a new one…that proved to be not only incompetent as well, but also full of stick necks and impulsive characters who jump on making gratuitous statements/accusations, without overthinking it.

Periodically, the debates concerning the intervention at Colectiv have been resumed. And every and each time, some people’s finger has pointed towards the usual scapegoats, i.e. the firefighters. The Firefighters, the DSU (the Department for Emergency Situations), Arafat.

Following the lessons learnt after the intervention at Colectiv, issued publicly by the DSU and dr. Raed Arafat, the second part of the situations came out: the report of the Government’s Inspectorate. Followed by the DSU’s point of view. We shall not engage in further technical details. The reports are available on the internet and can be studied by anyone who has an interest in them. Each issue brought up by the Inspectorate is dismissed with solid arguments by the DSU team, formed of people who are specialized in the emergency situations field.

Let us see, as follows, which terrible Government specialists concocted the report regarding the intervention at Colectiv. By taking into account the signatures on this wonderful report, we discover in the team the following: Laura Mihaela Năstăsescu - high counselor, coordinator, Oana Isbășescu - high counsel, Gabi Florea - high counsel, Daniela Băluță-Anghel - counselor and Vlad Brumă - counselor.

As one can see, four honourable ladies and a gentleman. Naturally, the head of the Inspectorate, the entertainer of the operation, the reputed gentleman with a bow-tie, Valentin Mircea, solicitor and, totally “by chance”, a close person to the ex-president Båsescu, a declared “fan” of Raed Arafat, could not be left out of this picture. We shall not remind you any longer of the fact that these respectable characters concluded that the firefighters do not train sufficiently, do not know how to “properly” resuscitate the victims, that they have too many comanding officers at an intervention, that, in the end, the things at ISU and DSU show “a deficit”.

Personally, I have been working for the firefighters since 1999. As a journalist, I witnessed numerous interventions and, out of respect for this Service and noble job, I published “The Firefighter’s Journal”. Never in my life has it crossed my mind to judge the way in which the rescuers act in an emergency situation, though one can see and learn a lot of things about interventions. All I can certainly say is that any intervention is a personal fight of the rescuer. And they fight to their teeth to win it. Nothing is more valuable than a saved life !

Coming back to the people who were part of the Inspectorate team that assessed the intervention at Colectiv, we have several justified questions on which we respectfully require an answer:

1. What is “the Government’s Inspectorate counselors’ expertise in the field of Emergency Situations” ? And we do not talk about higher education. A jurist or an engineer can easily be familiar with this field, without necessarily having a major in Firefighting, provided that he has a consistent record in the taking part or the studying of the emergency situations.
2. How come that the Inspectorate team did not co-opt people who are specialized in the emergency situations field ? For example, former commanding officers of the Romanian Firefighters, such as generals Vladimir Secară or Ionel Crăciun**, people who “wrote” pages in the firefighters’ history or even published specialty literature which is the foundation of the Romanian firefighters’ training in the field of firefighting ?
3. The intervention is considered to be “below average”. Do you find, in your vast experience within the emergency situations field, a case similar to that particular intervention at Colectiv ? If we take into account the cases you mentioned in the first lines of the report, we don’t consider them as such. In that report you described the situation at Colectiv as being the most terrible man-inflicted disaster that the Romanian society of the past 25 years has experienced.
4. In another train of thoughts, in an interview published on tolo.ro with the head of the Inspectorate Valentin Mircea and another sidekick of the Prime-Minister, Valentin Mircea stated decisively that “only by the special request of the Prime-Minister, the conclusions of the report could be altered”. Should we consider that the Inspectorate team carried out the assessment “with an already learnt conclusion” ?
5. On the same internet site we are presented with an error, brought to attention by the Inspectorate over the phone, which realized that during the interview they had launched some inaccuracies due to the unsettling news that the rescuing vehicles do not posess a GPS system. If such news is so disturbing, how could you, honourable gentlemen, assess a case such as that at Colectiv, full of disturbing moments and particularities when it comes to the death of dozens of people ? Are you sure that the report itself does not contain possible such inaccuracies triggered by a feeling of uneasiness ? (According to our source, the ambulances do not have a GPS system. Maybe you should personally check that.)
6. You also specify in the report that ISU București-Ilfov had acted inconsistently, whilst SMURD had a proper intervention. How can you SEPARATE the two institutions ? SMURD is part of ISU. One cannot exist without the other one. They are a WHOLE. Should we draw the conclusion that you have no idea of what you assessed, not even in theory ?
7. Have you ever thought, just for a second, that these accusations affect each of the firefighters who intervened on that night at Colectiv ? The same people who were risking their lives by rescuing those who were trapped in the fire ? Have you ever thought that, by sitting behind your desks and underestimating their efforts, you insult each firefighter in this country, who has ever intervened in an emergency situation ? Has it crossed your mind that the REALITY of such an intervention means more than a bunch of figures ? That an intervention cannot be managed like one manages a city hall or a store ?

We highly recommend that you read the words of appreciation, admiration and solidarity conveyed by their foreign fellow-firefighters, and not only them, after the intervention at Colectiv. Most certainly, they do not have expertise in the assessment field, they are just people who “play” with fire. And are not the sidekicks of a Prime-Minister who publicly disqualifies, in a Government meeting, three career officers, WITHOUT PROOF !