A firefighter standing in front of thick flames of fire and smoke breaking out of a house or forest, is activated from a series of decisions based on years of professional skill and Sisyphean practice that bring the mind and body to precise cooperation and timing. Where every sane person escapes as long as his soul is in it, the firefighter is required to get into danger, think calmly and consider what are the ways to stop the spread of the fire.
At any given moment, the firefighter is faced with a series of fateful decisions: Where can there be trapped people who need to be rescued quickly? How to stop the rapidly spreading flames from reaching the burning forest towards the houses? Skill and professionalism are at the heart of the process. Knowing how to deal with fire, how it thinks, how this entity spreads and strikes in full force. This is a mind game of finding vulnerabilities, where firefighters seek to find its weakness and there strike at full force.
Last week's fire in the Jerusalem mountains is part of a series of huge fires that hit the country almost every summer. Sometimes it breaks out because hikers forget a pile of smoking coals, sometimes the fires are the result of a malicious hand rejoicing in the destruction of the forests.
The fire in Carmel spread quickly to the settlements and completely destroyed houses and with them whole worlds of families who perished within a few minutes. The fire broke out in the Haifa neighborhoods and became a serious danger. A bus carrying dozens of prison service cadets, police and firefighters lost their lives in the fight against the flames. The fire knows no mercy. The question that arises is - what are the lessons learned from this series of giant fires ?.
The Fire and Rescue Commissioner, Dedi Simchi, has adopted a path that could lead to an acute crisis in the field, since he does not see the generation of firefighters that has grown since the Carmel disaster as the appropriate answer that should lead the new fire era. This is the impression obtained from the fact that Simchi consistently and systematically selects military and police personnel who will form the line of command and management in the fire and rescue system.
How can one expect from commanders who have grown up in completely different professions, the abilities to put out the fire and shout "after me"? There is a serious shortcoming here that is followed by wrong decision-making processes. One of them was last week, when the commissioner decided on the basis of faulty and incorrect information on a call for a "red torch" in which all fire brigades were mobilized to fight the fire. They were used poorly and lackingly and many of them were not even expressed in the fighting against the fire that spread in the forests of Jerusalem.
Another manifestation of the flawed decision-making processes was in the Commissioner's call for international aid to deal with the fire, even though many believed that we had not reached the full potential of our forces.
These examples express the lack of knowledge and confidence that comes from the command forces, those who have acquired their skill in the army and police, who are currently waging war on fire.
Firefighters know and are ready for the summer fires.
Every winter they roam all over the country and issue detailed reports on the dangers facing forested communities.
That is, firefighters alert any local authority or municipality to the potential dangers lurking because of the proximity of trees and shrubs to homes.
Every summer, the same dangers become real.
The flames start in the forests near the settlements and quickly turn into fire traps.
Every head of an authority knows about the dangers of fire to its inhabitants, but these prefer to ignore and assume that this will not happen to them.
The excuses are varied and from all next door, however in the face of the broken heart of their residents, who could have seen their homes and living enterprises on fire, they do not see.
The conclusion is one: it is imperative to transfer clear enforcement powers to the Fire and Rescue Commission.
Firefighters' reports must turn from a recommendation to a decision for immediate execution. The biggest fire can be extinguished in a glass of water, the only question facing firefighters is when to catch it. And good one hour earlier.