Tag Archives: FIRE FIGHTERS

Smoking Hot Heroes! French Firemen Strip Off For A Charity Calendar

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A group of French firemen stripped off for a scorchingly hot new charity calendar to raise money for Pompiers Sans Frontieres, an organisation that provides humanitarian aid.

The photos were taken by French fashion photographer Fred Goudon, who spent a full year snapping the guys. “For me and for many others, firefighters are heroes. Every single day, these guys are out there saving people’s lives,” Goudon told The Local. “And they’re all so nice, so strong… and you
can see it in the pictures that there is a kind of pride in them that others don’t have.”

Photo credit: Fred Goudon

2 Fire Fighters Die, N400m Goods Destroyed In Onitsha Midnight Fire

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Tears flowed freely yesterday at the Ochanja ultra modern market, Onitsha as a Sunday midnight fire   ravaged the shoe dealers’ section of the market destroying goods worth over N400million.

Unfortunately, two fire fighters from Okpoko Fire Service Station died while trying to put out the fire even as traders in other sections of the market closed their shops in solidarity yesterday.

Giving an insight into the incident, Chairman of Ochanja Shoe Dealers Association, Chief Nwabueze Umeh told Daily Sun that a mysterious fire started in a shop within the market at 5 p.m. on Sunday but they were able to quench the fire and went back home only to get another news at about 2 a.m. that another fire started in a different section of the market.

He said they immediately contacted men of the Okpoko Fire Station, who quickly mobilised to the scene but while they were at work, a decking slab from the shops caved in and killed one of the fire fighters instantly while the other had his spine broken. He died at the hospital where he was  taken to for treatment. Umeh noted further that the tragedy which befell the fire fighters stalled further efforts to put out the fire leading to the destruction of many shops with goods estimated at N400 million lost to the inferno.

Governor Willie Obiano visited the market yesterday morning and promised to provide fire-fighting equipment to the traders and also assist victims.

Two of the affected traders, Boniface Amaizu from Oraifite and Iloduba John Kennedy told Daily Sun  that they were alerted on phone at about  3 a.m. while they were in the village that Sunday but before they could get to the market by 4a.m, their shops and their entire goods had been consumed by t he fire.

Credit: Sun

Massive Blasts Rock Chinese City Of Tianjin; 44 Dead, Hundreds Injured

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Two huge explosions tore through an industrial area where toxic chemicals and gas were stored in the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing at least 44 people, including at least a dozen fire fighters, officials and state media said on Thursday.

At least 520 people were injured, more than 60 of them seriously, the Tianjin government said on its Weibo microblog, and the People’s Daily newspaper said four fires were still burning.

Wednesday night’s blasts, so large that they were seen by satellites in space, sent shockwaves through apartment blocks kilometres away in the port city of 15 million people. Internet videos showed fireballs shooting into the sky and the U.S. Geological Survey registered the blasts as seismic events.

Vast areas of the port – the 10th largest in the world – were devastated, crumpled shipping containers were thrown around like match sticks, hundreds of new cars were torched and port buildings left as burnt-out shells, Reuters witnesses said.

“I was sleeping when our windows and doors suddenly shook as we heard explosions outside. I first thought it was an earthquake,” Guan Xiang, who lives 7 km (4 miles) away from the explosion site, told Reuters by telephone.

Guan, 24, said he saw flames and a mushroom cloud in the sky as he and other residents scrambled to get out of the building.

Tianjin authorities said 12 firefighters were among the 44 killed.

The cause of the blasts was unknown but industrial accidents are not uncommon in China following three decades of breakneck economic growth. A blast at an auto parts factory in eastern China killed 75 people a year ago when a room filled with metal dust exploded.

The state-run Beijing News earlier cited Tianjin fire authorities as saying they had lost contact with 36 firefighters, and that another 33 were among the hundreds of people being treated in nearby hospitals.

The official Xinhua news agency said 1,000 firefighters and more than 140 fire engines were struggling to contain a blaze in a warehouse that contained “dangerous goods”.

“The volatility of the goods means the fire is especially unpredictable and dangerous to approach,” Xinhua said.

Several fire trucks had been destroyed and nearby firefighters wept as they worked to extinguish flames, the Beijing News reported.

President Xi Jinping demanded that authorities “make full effort to rescue and treat the injured and ensure the safety of people and their property”.

Xi said in a statement carried by official media that those responsible should be “severely handled”.

City officials had met recently with companies to discuss tightening safety standards on the handling of dangerous chemicals. The Tianjin Administration of Work Safety posted a notice about the meeting with companies at the port on its website a week ago.

TOXIC SMOKE

Anxious residents rushed to hospitals to seek news about injured loved ones. Dozens of police guarded the entrance of the TEDA hospital, a Reuters witness said.

Pictures on Chinese media websites showed residents and workers, some bleeding, fleeing their homes. Xinhua said people had been hurt by broken glass and other flying debris.