The Angrois train accident, with 79 dead and 143 injured, is the greatest challenge that the emergency services in Galicia have had to face in recent years. That July 24, 2013, the police deployment in Santiago for the celebration of the National Day of Galicia, the coincidence of the change of shift at the Compostela hospital at the time of the incident – which allowed, de facto, doubling the available troops – and The heroism of the neighbors, rushing onto the roads to rescue the victims without thinking about the consequences, minimized the consequences of the event. Because the coordination of the emergency services was non-existent during the two hours following the disaster, as the internal reports of the date revealed. Now, while the president of the Xunta boasts about the collaboration of the Galician emergencies in Valencia after DANA, the professionals who lived through the Alvia tragedy have no doubts: the same mistakes would be made today. In this last decade, they say, nothing has been learned.
“Do you want to talk about what it says on paper, which is very good, or about reality?” Xabier Villar was spokesperson for the Galicia Inter-Union Firefighters Board and knows well the difference between theory and practice. He explains it with a recurring example. Leading a team from the Santiago municipal park, he went to an urban fire in the neighboring town hall of Ames, where the regional park troops were already intervening. He remembers that, at that time, “I couldn’t carry out the operation I wanted because the other colleagues were inside and I didn’t know if I could get them into trouble.” There was no way to communicate, since “we each have our radio system with our frequencies.” In cases like this, “three firefighters on one side and eight on the other do not add up to eleven.”
“If I want to talk to those in Santiago, I have no way to do so unless, in the middle of an emergency, we start exchanging frequencies like someone exchanging trading cards in the schoolyard.” José Luis Pareja represents the Unitary Coordinator of Professional Firefighters and works in the Ordes regional park, 20 kilometers from the Galician capital and where any emergency that activates a higher plan can force him to collaborate side by side with the Compostela teams. “We can learn from what happened to us and know how it should be resolved or do what the Xunta has been doing for twenty years: nothing.”
These situations, if you can choose, it is better that they always occur in the morning. “In the emergencies of Galicia, after three in the afternoon there are no people responsible; nor on weekends or holidays.” This is what Honorino Raña says, current member of the Inter-Union Board and sergeant in Ordes. He is one of the ten sergeants of the regional parks of Coruña. Everyone, according to what he says, is assigned a shift from eight to three from Monday to Friday. “They prefer to have a morning sergeant on administrative duties instead of taking shifts and having one 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Three is not a binomial
The bleak panorama drawn by professionals only leaves one positive advance in the last decade: the transition to direct public management, shared between the Xunta and councils, of some regional parks that, in their origin, were private. Today, the 24 posts – 10 in the province of A Coruña, 6 in Lugo and 4 in Ourense and Pontevedra – add up to a total of 436 firefighters, with an average of 18 in each, a staff that professionals consider clearly insufficient. . “With about 650 we would start to have good service,” says Raña.
However, the legal vacuum does not establish a minimum number of personnel to act. Professionals are guided by the criteria of American regulations based on the binomials “two in, two out” (two in, two out). The greatest risk for a firefighter is to be alone, isolated, in a fire where he cannot see beyond his arm – or the helmet visor – and it is very easy to become disoriented. For this reason, a basic formula is that of the two binomials: the one who comes in to extinguish and the one who remains outside, to go to rescue the injured or to carry out some support work, such as controlling the stairs. A very basic team would be completed by the driver and the crew chief, who can sometimes be the same person. However, Villar cites studies that indicate that, to “ensure 100% effectiveness” in a house fire, a team of 14 people is needed.
In regional parks, however, the basic staff is only three firefighters per shift. “Of course, where there was nothing, putting three is fine,” Villar ironically says. But, furthermore, this tiny number can only be reached, with the current staff, if professionals multiply overtime. When that figure is not reached, it is time to close, because with less than three employees, the park does not open. And rare is the day when the 24 Galician parks operate at full capacity.
“We stopped counting park closures when we reached 900,” recalls Raña, who speaks of an average of “three or four” parks closed each day. The situation reached such a point of tension that the group remained on strike for seven months, including camping in the Praza do Obradoiro and spectacular performances in which there was no shortage of fire and fireproof suits throughout Galicia. They lifted the strike after an agreement to negotiate when the regional elections in February were over. Since then, the situation has not progressed. The group’s demands continue to be to increase the workforce by more than 200 personnel.
“As there are no regulations, they can say that with only one firefighter they already have service,” adds Villar. And they are convinced that there is none, precisely so as not to get their fingers caught. Pareja remembers that he himself found on the Conbé website (the Association of Firefighters Consortiums of Spain) a procedure for using the ladder vehicle “where it was said that five personnel were needed exclusively to attend to it.” Shortly after I “brought it up,” the procedure “disappeared.”
“Madrid is a model that our PP could look askance at, but it is not interesting because, how are we going to make the minimum service 11 effective?” they ask before answering themselves. “It’s nonsense. But when Sogama burns and three firefighters go, what? Will we be enough?” Sogama, the Galician Environment Society, is in charge of waste treatment for the vast majority of Galician municipalities. Its headquarters are in Cerceda, an area of influence of the Ordes park, which Raña summarizes as follows: “50,000 inhabitants, 7 population centers and 5 industrial estates.”
112: telemarketing without emergency technicians
The “lack of will” that they attribute to the rulers – especially the Xunta, but without forgetting the deputations – is, above all, economic, since many of their problems of means – “human, new trucks are bought, there is always money” – would be solved with a budget injection. However, there are other organizational issues that, for them, show the lack of commitment of the regional executive.
“In 2007, the Xunta – then governed by PSOE and BNG – took one year to homogenize the emergency services and two to provide Galicia with a firefighter statute,” recalls Villar. Almost two decades later, the sector is still something similar to Pancho Villa’s army. “They prefer to create beach bars, atomize… divide a group that must work in a coordinated manner or look for differences and delve into them so that a union does not occur that would be a problem for the leaders,” summarizes Pareja.
Not counting those who fight forest fires, in Galicia there are firefighters from municipal parks, regional parks, GES (Supramunicipal Emergency Groups, heirs of the old GRUMIR, who are in charge of an emergency as well as a clearing or the painting of a road) and the Civil Protection volunteers. All, “coordinated” from 112, a service outsourced to the company Konecta, the same one that came to the news when it wanted to discount the days of the workers affected by DANA in Malaga who could not go to work.
The reason for the quotes in “coordinated” is simple: those who answer the alert calls are telephone operators “subject to the telemarketing agreement,” according to Pareja. At the 112 center there are no emergency technicians who can carry out work similar to that of triage in hospital emergencies. The telephone operators simply receive the notice and communicate it to the nearest park. The decision to go out to act, decide the number of means to be used or stay in the facilities will be the head of the operation. Responsibility for what happens, too.
This gives rise to “absurd” protocols, such as the one that forces firefighters to be notified of a cone lying on a road “which may have its own maintenance contract” but which, however, does not warn of a vehicle overturned on the road. “if there are no injuries.” “In our entire region there is no local police at night and there is no Civil Guard, one yes and one no. So we are the only ones who can go to report the accident, but we are not informed.” Have firefighters been involved in the development of these protocols? “As you can imagine, no.”
The Xunta: everything under control… of town councils and councils
The vision of the Xunta is very different. The Department of the Presidency, on which the General Directorate of Emergencies depends, ensures that the hierarchies are clear according to the civil protection plans corresponding to each case: “a special plan for risks such as floods or forest fires, or the PLATERGA -Territorial Plan of Emerxencias de Galicia – in the rest of the cases. These documents state “that the firefighters are part of the Intervention Group and also who is the leader of that group.” What professionals say is that, when these situations occur, the decision is made “based on improvisation.”
Regarding communications, the Presidency highlights the existence of a “own and specific digital public network for emergencies and security” that “guarantees” a “safe and reliable” interconnection, even in extreme or saturation situations. The firefighters of the local parks – those of the large Galician cities such as Vigo, A Coruña or Santiago – do not use this network, which was created in 2015 to “enable safe interconnection between all emergency personnel” and “improve their coordination.”
The Galician government recalls that the powers in these areas rest with the town councils – when they exceed 20,000 inhabitants – and the provincial councils – when they do not reach that figure – but that, even so, “it contributes more than 50% of the costs of operation” of the consortia, and complements the park network with the GES and Civil Protection volunteers. “In recent years, almost 30 million euros in material was contributed to these media.”
This argument is, precisely, one of the recurring criticisms of firefighters. “There is a regional commitment to provide volunteers with material at will,” Raña responds. “This advertising creates a false sense of security. Of course, you only hire the staff once, but every time you purchase a vehicle, you have space in the news.” He sums it up with a very graphic image: “it’s like buying fifteen trucks for a park but only having one firefighter. A fool for the entire society,” he concludes.
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