commentary firegeezer on 28 Aug 2007 07:34 am
A Greek Reports In To Firegeezer
A FEW DAYS AGO WE RECEIVED A COMMENT from Mr. Kostis A—. who lives in Athens. He mentioned that a major part of the problem was, in his opinion, the fact that recently all the country’s mid- and high-level fire officers had been replaced for purely political reasons. I asked him if he would tell us some more about that and he has graciously taken the time to report back to us. Here is his unedited comment on the subject:
After a mail from Mr.Bill Schumm asking me to write more about my “after winning the election three years ago fired all the captains and the head chiefs of every service of Greece” statement, i wanted to make some things clear.
First of all my friends i read some of your “politcal forum” opinions and i want to tell you that its NOT an act of terrorism (as a friend said). Its the incompetence of our goverment that helps this fire burn for 5 days now.The death toll has risen to 63 people. 63 members of OUR family. Whole Greece is mourning.
Because we are in a site related to fires i ll write down these facts. France has sent three Canadairs,Italy one,Cyprus 30 special trained firemen,Turkey one plane and Germany two helicopters.(The last two came today-5thday!!!)apart from that, i havent a clue wheather or not the other countries will send help.US in NOT going to sent(sb wrote that in the forum)
With our last goverment we had the head officer that did an outstanding job in the Fire Dept.(the cherry on the top was during the Earthquake of 1999 in Athens) and so the Head Officer got promoted to the National Protection Office.
After the former goverment didnt get elected three years ago, the new goverment stepped up and retired 70 percent of the highly ranking officers of the fire dept (18 from 28 people even though they required 2-3 years to go into pension) as well as another big percentage of the medium -lets say- ranking officers, in order to put people that help the goverment get elected.
But this people didnt have any experience what so ever (because the former goverment was for 10 years straight and every officer had experience for several occasions)
Now try to imagine what happens when the Chief of the Fire Dept has to work with the Head Officer of the National Protection Office for every little or big disaster but arent speaking to each other because they are from a different political parties and the Chief of Fire Dept wants to make unnecessary changes in the force in order to help people of his political party.TOTAL CHAOS
I mean from the Olympic year of 2004 where everything worked properly,to this mess 3 years later.
Its a shame…You cant imagine how beautiful were those places…
