Modernization of the State Fire Service (SFS): First Results
The State Fire Service has great plans. We are going to build 10 new watchtowers, extend 13 old ones, buy 350 vehicles and containers and 8,600 radio-telephones, and replace over 200 PSTN switches with new ones. Firefighters will get almost 28,000 special suits, gloves and balaclavas. We are going to employ 600 civilians; firefighters' salary should rise approximately by 860 zlotys. We learned those assumptions of the Ministry of Interior and Administration Services Modernization Act on one of the most important official briefings, organized this year by the State Fire Service Headquarters. The firefighting management, the Ministry of Interior and Administration representatives, as well as head-offices of the firefighting trade unions were invited on the briefing. We asked Chief Brigadier Kazimierz Krzowski, the Commander-in-Chief of the SFS, Deputy Chief of the National Civil Defence to comment on those changes. (own info)
INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH
Changing Ways of Rescue
Wieslaw Jaroszynski from the Office of Technical Rescue and Fire Protection of PKP-Polish Rail Lines talks about railway rescue, problems concerning actions with firefighters, firewalls dating back to the time of steam engine and even older tunnels. By Anna Landuch
Fire by Candlelight
Flickering candlelight, associated usually with romantic passion, will make the firefighters from the Kujawy-Pomerania region think of one of the most difficult skill-demanding actions they ever took part in. In September they extinguished the fire of the biggest European candle factory in Biały Bor. Report by Paweł Fratczak
Fire in the Centre of Poznań
In the last issue of Fire Review we discussed theoretical aspects of rescue and firefighting operations during apartment fires. All the theoretical deliberation will be fully completed by report from the action during a very dangerous fire in the tenement house in the very centre of the city of Poznań, on the area of congested housing and road and tram traffic intensity. By Jerzy Ranecki.
Call: At the Disposal of the Police
According to the art.1.2 point 3 of the Act on State Fire Emergency Service, primary tasks of the service in question include e.g. auxiliary specialist rescue during natural disasters or during suppression of local dangers by other rescue services. Duty officer of the police control room in a voivodeship city, on the basis of a regulation cited, asked his fellow firefighter to dispatch a turntable ladder for an action of opening a flat in a several-storey building, as police patrol noticed a window ajar in a bathroom of a flat, which was a suspected murder site. By Maciej Schroeder
Radioactive/Biological/Chemical Decontamination
The ABC of Decontamination
The problem of radioactive/biological/chemical decontamination seems to be neglected in Poland. Nevertheless, there are proper technical solutions in this field, assures Grażyna Krause, Ph.D.
Firefighting Action for Half a Million
Arsonist in a Landfill?
In Skoroszyce, near Nysa in the Opole region, 37 units of the State and Volunteer Fire Service struggled with a dangerous fire in a rubber waste landfill. Report by Henryk Ferster
Static Electricity as a Cause of Fires and Blasts
Dangerous Charges
Static electricity is one of the first phenomena researched in the field of electricity; Thales of Miletus studied it already in 600 BC. You can encounter the phenomenon both in industry and in everyday life. Static electricity charges can be obtained by contact or friction of two solid objects, on pipelines by fluid, steam or gas flow, by spinning dust in the air, by sprinkling liquid, grinding and pouring sugar, walking in rubber sole shoes, by shaking and rubbing, by dry-cleaning, car drive, filtering etc. The charges can be caused by mechanical processes, phase transition, thermal phenomena, electrochemical and ionization processes or electric induction. It is impossible to eliminate static electricity, but indeed it is possible, and desired, to prevent the discharge, as its consequences can be really serious, not only in industry, warns Tomasz Sawicki, court expert in the field of firefighting.
Blast and Blaze at Fuel Depot near London
Devil lurked in Buncefield
On 11 December 2005 in a fuel depot in Buncefield, England, a series of blasts resulted in a huge fire, which engulfed 21 large storage tanks and injured 43 people. Within the radius of 3 km windows were blown out; clouds of thick dark smoke rising to a height of 500 metres covered almost whole southern England. Pawel Janik and Rafal Porowski examine the causes of the disaster.
Fireball at Liquid Gas Storage Facilities
A leak of liquefied petroleum gas occurred during unloading the gas from a tanker into storage tanks at Liquid Gas Storage Facilities in Zagan. The fire, which broke out, threatened the storage facilities and the bordering forest. This was the beginning of interesting exercises described by Agnieszka Rekas.
Huge Baby
Bronto F 101 HLA
In spite of new solutions, technologies and security precautions as well as very strict norms and fire safety regulations, construction of increasingly tall buildings requires fire service to have increasingly high ladders and hydraulic jacks. World leader in construction and production of the latter, Finnish company Bronto Skylift Oy AB, well known also in Poland, has recently presented its youngest baby: 101-meter giant! By Paweł Fratczak
How to Enter a Room More Safely through a Window?
Firefighters from fire and rescue units often have problems with entering flats. There are many methods of forcing the lock, but generally they involve considerable material losses and risk to the rescuers. Piotr Rybak presents one of the easiest and the most effective methods.
National Cohesion Strategy 2007-2013
Guaranteed Improvement of Security
Having widely consulted it with the public and the Fire Service, the government adopted the National Cohesion Strategy, the basic programming document prepared to sensibly spend 67.28 milliard euro, granted to Poland as a part of the EU cohesion policy. This important document guarantees the improvement of rescue and civil protection system. By Marcin Słupek
Our "Ecological Effect" Bought
Is the efficiency increase of fire and rescue actions a pro-ecological action? The Regional Fund for Environmental Protection in the Mazovia province says: "By all means!" (own info)
Money for Security, Fete for Education
The State Fire Service as well as Volunteer Fire Service will get 4 millions zlotys each - this year grant of the PZU SA (Polish insurance company) will be spent mostly on vehicles and road rescue equipment, which should be distributed among fire and rescue units across Poland. Some of the equipment was presented in Warsaw during a family fete on one of the October Saturdays. (own info)
Company Services on the Carpet?
An increasing number of cases compelled the SFS to co-operate with organizations and institutions, whose main sphere of activity does not focus on rescue, or include only some of its specific areas. It was obvious that the National Rescue and Firefighting System would develop, incorporating other institutions and organizations, not necessarily strictly rescue type ones. The incorporation of volunteer fire service units, first of all of commune units of the VFS was symptomatic. The incorporation of broadly understood medical rescue service seems to be natural. Police has been co-operating with the system since the very beginning, as this is part of its statutory tasks. Thus, it is difficult to find a definitive answer on a question, why so few company fire service and rescue service units work in the National Rescue and Firefighting System. By Krzysztof Łangowski
Blast in the Spa Land
August 79 AD was drawing to an end. Local election campaign in Pompeii had just finished, moreover, the residents of Pompeii celebrated another birth anniversary of long dead emperor Augustus, and shortly later they honoured god of a local mountain; on 23 August a happy festival of Vulcanalia was observed in order to provide heavy crops of grapevine. No-one supposed that the good old Mount Vesuvius, covered with grapevine up to the crater, could do a harm to anyone. It did indeed. By Paweł Rochala
History of the Fire Service Union on the Polish Lands
History of the the Florian Union (1916-1926) by Krzysztof Krezel.
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