GOING HOME

One family's diary, journeys and thoughts

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Dial 911 for emergencies?

Actually, in Armenia there is not one, but 3 different emergency numbers: 01 for fire, 02 for police and 03 for ambulance. But even those... Well, I'd better start from the beginning.

My coworker arrived this morning very agitated yet tired-looking. She told us she was battling fire alongside other neighbors the good part of the night. Turns out, there was some alcoholic living upstairs, who, being drunk, fell asleep with the heater on and too close to his bed. The bed caught fire, then the rest of the furniture, and then the entire room. Fortunately, one of the neighbors smelled burning, woke up others and together several guys broke in just in time to save the drunkard from burning alive. The guy was dispatched to the hospital with severe burns, and the neighbors put out the fire by carefully pouring water or covering it with blankets. The interior of the apartment had burned out, along with the floor boards, and there were some smoldering fires underneath the floor, between his apartment and my coworker's (we are talking a 4-5 story stone building here, with wooden beams between the floors.) They had to remove the floorboards, make sure there were no fires burning under them, and then take turns keeping watch until it was obvious that the fire went completely out.

-So, did you call the firefighters? - Asked I.
-Nope, we didn't. They wouldn't be as careful as we were putting out that fire, and would have drenched not only his, but our apartment as well, and probably a few others, too. We couldn't possibly have that!


As I was saying, there are three emergency numbers in Armenia. My best guess would be that we just can't afford to send 2 or 3 emergency teams in response to every call yet. As you can see, sometimes even one team could be too much!

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