In other countries, they have a lot of praise for their firefighters. In some countries, they are affectionately called their superheroes because of how fast they respond to the calls for people who are in bad situations. In case you didn’t know, firefighters are not just people who are meant to fight fire, they are there for an emergency and can be called upon for any life-threatening situation in which you find yourself.
In some countries, firefighters are the backbone to fighting a lot of disasters they face but in my country Ghana you’ll be lucky to have them even attend to your call. When they even do, how sure are you that they will get there as fast as possible? The sad truth is that they do not attend to the cries of the people as fast as they should and it’s a worrying reality.
We used to make a lot of fun about their not being time conscious and all that but it’s only funny when you are not the one in the situation and you need help desperately.
This reminds me of a situation I encountered with them some time ago. A house was burning in our area after it had just rained and the whole place was muddy. The firefighters were called upon; after wasting all the time in the world they ended up getting here only to get stuck in the mud. One will normally think that they will have the technical know-how to get out of it or at least have the tools to get out of the situation but unfortunately, they didn’t have those much-needed skills and tools.
They were stuck in the mud until the house was completely burnt.
Who is to blame for this?
Normally I would have blamed the fighters so much cause you’d expect them to know what to do in such a situation. But for me, I blamed it on our society so much. If you’ve ever been to my area you’d realise that our settlement plan is really poor and that when next someone faces such a situation he or she will most likely see his house get burnt down without the fire service being able to help them out.
We have placed so much importance on building that we don’t even care about giving up the space that the firefighters will pass through when we encounter such a situation and it’s appalling.
We have to do better but then we keep acting like illiterates in my area.
Just behind our house, we managed to leave that space but the next house refused to leave the space so instead of no parties leaving the space it’s just one party which is not big enough to help both parties when they face an emergency.
Is it our responsibility to keep to this?
Well, I wouldn’t say we have the responsibility for this as the lawsuit should be working but then if the laws are not working we should
Place a priority on our own lives. Yes, we might want to use up all the space to build on but after all that when we encounter this delay situation we will have to build from ground 0.
Can we blame the institutions?
Well, the problem with the country is that everyone seems to blame his superior for any problem encountered. I say yes they are to be blamed as they don’t provide the necessary services at times but then I mostly blame it on our maintenance culture in this country.
Just because the fire fighting department is a government institution doesn’t mean that people working there should not take care of the tools they are provided with by themselves. Instead, they are using these vehicles to do other stuff without taking care of it.
At the end of the day, we are the people who are most affected. Yes, at times we praise the work they do for us but most times it’s just criticism and that’s too bad.
This is an entry to the #mayinleo prompt by inleo. You can read more about it here to also join.
