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accident victims out of their vehicles, while also increasing the lowing an explosion in a drugstore in the centre of Charleroi in
amount of hazardous materials transported by road and rail. which more than fifteen people died. By contrast it’s much worse
Specialist teams have been created, including divers, the mobile when children get killed. I remember a fire in Charleroi which
chemical incident unit, the hazardous incident team and a team killed five children. That was terrible.”
specialised in new pets.
On the other hand, the 2015 annual report on the work of the
But the biggest change is in the number and nature of adminis- Charleroi Regional Fire Service lists 7175 call-outs (including
trative missions associated with monitoring fire safety regula- 702 house fires, 659 cases of extricating people, 496 cases of
tions (fire and panic prevention, the enforcement of EU, Federal, assisting people, 406 vehicle fires, 241 (suspected) gas leaks
regional and local regulations) and emergency planning. These just in the field of emergency services).
missions assigned to fire brigade officers (the organisation of
various events ranging from a marquee for a Christmas market Moreover, it’s mainly the figures for paramedic calls (Aide
or a mussel supper to a firework display or a festival for 25,000 Médicale Urgente or A.M.U.) which have shot up over the
people) accounted for 2264 missions and 1500 certificates issued last ten years. The number of ambulance calls (we have
by the Charleroi fire brigade in 2015. 3 ambulances approved by the Ministry of Health for
Charleroi and one for Jumet) has doubled over this
A fireman’s work is thus very varied and diversified, covering a period, reaching 14,533 calls for the four ambulances.
vast field defined in the Royal Decree of 7 April 2003. Below is
a non-exhaustive list: road accidents, accidents at work, assist- O.: “Yes, it’s a very tough job both physically and mentally. It’s
ing people in need, responding to an alarm, rescuing animals, very difficult when you come across dead children. I can re-
people trapped in a lift, asphyxia, closing off an area, retrieving member one time when we were called out because someone
corpses, stretchering people off mountains, extricating people had died from strangulation. On arriving, we discovered a young
from vehicles or collapsed buildings, brush fires, chimney fires, girl of sixteen who had hanged herself. It was terrible. The fam-
garbage fires, meter fires, vehicle fires, detection of gas or suspi- ily blamed everybody. It was unacceptable and inexplicable. It
cious odours, CO poisoning, removing traffic threats, cleaning up was impossible to reassure them, but after much discussion, they
a road, pumping, pollution, spills or leaks of dangerous substanc- allowed us to take her down. It turned out that the girl was seri-
es, vehicles that have fallen into a river or canal, false alarms, ously ill and was due to have an amputation the following week.
wasp nests. She just couldn’t face up to it. When we got back to the station,
we spent a lot of time discussing it. In such difficult cases, we
F. : “It’s a very tough job. On the one hand, it’s very dangerous. We have the possibility of getting psychological support. But, gen-
are regularly exposed to a wide range of risks: the risk of falling, erally speaking, the men are a bit prudish, preferring instead to
the risk of being electrocuted, the risk of drowning, the risk of ex- discuss such cases among themselves, sharing their experience
plosion, the risk of getting buried, the risk of getting burnt, the risk of the problem. I went to the girl’s burial.”
of poisoning. Yet throughout my whole career, just one colleague
was killed in a fire. He didn’t get out in time .... It was in Septem- I get the feeling that Oscar is still quite upset.
ber 1992, and the 42-year-old colleague got buried under the ruins
of a building. The death of an ordinary hero. By contrast, I’ve seen EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED SO MUCH SINCE FRANÇOIS
lots of colleagues come away with severe injuries and/or after-ef- STARTED WORKING AS A FIREMAN!
fects, even with occupational illnesses which were not recognised
until very recently. Yes, we constantly find ourselves confronted And yet, even back then, the fire services in Charleroi were well
by difficult situations. You see people injured, burnt, crushed. You organised compared to others. The Royal Decree of 8 November
see quite a few dead people, not always a nice sight. Over my forty 1967 (concerning, in times of peace, the organisation of munici-
years in the fire service, I must have dealt with more than four pal and regional fire services and the coordination of help in the
hundred of them. Any other noteworthy event? A major fire fol- case of fire), classifies the Charleroi Fire Department as one of
