Should firefighters become a job?
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E-mail CRI, January 6, 2015
Unlike in countries like the U.S., Chinese firefighters are mostly young men serving in the army.
![The bodies of two firefighters were found at the site of a warehouse collapse caused by fire burning in Harbin city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Saturday, January 3, 2015. Five firefighters were killed and at least 13 others were injured in the collapse that occurred on January 2, 2015. [Photo: Chinanews.com]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20150106/7427ea210acc16157fa710.jpg "The bodies of two firefighters were found at the site of a warehouse collapse caused by fire burning in Harbin city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Saturday, January 3, 2015. Five firefighters were killed and at least 13 others were injured in the collapse that occurred on January 2, 2015. [Photo: Chinanews.com]") |
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The bodies of two firefighters were found at the site of a warehouse collapse caused by fire burning in Harbin city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Saturday, January 3, 2015. Five firefighters were killed and at least 13 others were injured in the collapse that occurred on January 2, 2015. [Photo: Chinanews.com] |
The service term for most of them is two years. It can be extended to three or more years if they are given promotions.
Under normal circumstances, these 20-something soldiers will receive one-year of training before fighting an actual fire.
But a head of a fire prevention unit named Gao Feng said that, in practice, recruits often do not get enough training before going to the frontline.
Facing staff shortages, they often have to send the new recruits to fire scenes, Gao said.
He also added that his city has a population of over 5 million with merely 300 hundred firefighters.
This has put many of these young men's lives in danger.
At the start of 2015 a warehouse fire in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang province, took 5 young lives: the oldest, Yang Xiaowei was 23 while the youngest Zhao Zilong, was only 19 and joined the army some four months ago.
This is not the first case of such a tragedy in China.
From 2008 to 2012, more than 140 firefighters died in the frontline. Their average age was 24.
What should China do?
Fan Wei, a head at a provincial level fire prevention team, thinks that retirement of veterans poses a potential problem for firefighting.
He said, when a handful of soldiers get promoted after three years, they are only qualified as junior-level firefighters.
Fan also revealed that he might also have to leave his position if he could not get a promotion in the near future, even with 2 decades of firefighting experiences.
He added that he thinks firefighting should be a profession like any other job.
People can still work as firefighters in their forties or fifties with abundant experience so that they know how to respond to deadly emergencies, Fan said.
Surveys show that firefighters in the U.S. have an average age of 49.
However, an expert from a college where professional firefighters are trained in China called Li Benli said the reason for China to choose serving soldiers as firefighters is that the country hopes young men can make up for low-quality fire fighting equipment.
Thusly, other experts call for market-oriented reforms in firefighting.
Companies can hire professional firefighter teams for fire prevention to supplement the lack of funding and equipment, which can also help to push firefighting into the realm of professionalism.
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