Let’s take the National Theatre, fires there are usually very frightening or Veletržní Palace, which burns well and let us stay in Holešovice – the Industrial Palace was also an interesting spectacle. The strange thing is that people usually remember fires best when they do enormous damage but nobody remembers what had been saved, what the fire fighters managed to rescue, how many preventative measures were taken by owners who were sensible enough to invest into good fire security. Fire security starts already with e.g. the choice of material used for the flooring of a hotel or storage of inflammable materials. The fire brigade is an essential part of city life, not only when it comes to fires but also floods, as was clearly witnessed during the floods in 2002. Let us not forget the wind, windstorms also damage possessions, uproot trees and kill.
Prague has one professional fire brigade with its headquarters in Sokolská Street and various stations dispersed throughout Prague to minimize the time which is needed in order to reach the place of fire. Then there are thousands of “goodies” as people call volunteer fire fighters. These are not there to merely drive a historical fire engine on a national holiday. They are an important reserve and a great help to the professional fire brigade, which often calls upon them when there are not enough people.
We also should not forget company fire brigades, which also help when there is a need to fight disasters. Prague inhabitants are not much concerned about the fact that the volunteer fire brigades come under the city, the professional under the State and the company ones under their employers. The fact is that not so long ago, the professional fire brigade was secured by the city which in the end transferred the whole fire brigade with its possessions amounting to several milliards crowns to the State. At present, the city looks after their volunteer fire fighters numbering some two thousand well-trained and equipped people ready to intervene at any time. In the past, the State cared about fire fighters only when a disaster happened. Then a fire broke out in Veletržní Palace and it only showed all the imperfections of the fire brigade’s equipment and the insufficient number of fire fighters for such a big city. There is always room for improvement, yet at the moment, it is obvious that the equipment and the training of the fire brigade are not too bad. What people forget about, though, is prevention. We will also dedicate an article to that topic in our series.