1/6 Rescuers get an animal out of the water (photo: Sander van Gils/SQ Vision).
It’s a cliché: firefighters who are mainly concerned with that cat in the tree. But saving animals is indeed a task of the fire service. And the challenges that come with this are often much bigger than you think.
Hundreds of times a year the fire brigade goes out throughout Brabant to help an animal in need. Like Wednesday evening in Nuenen, when fifty pigs were rescued from a manure pit. Or for messages like this:
- the cat in the tree, we already called it,
- a bird caught in wire mesh,
- a dog that has fallen through the ice,
- a cow that has ended up in the ditch,
- a horse that needs to be straightened,
- pigs that have fallen through the grate of the manure pit.
When the fire department leaves the station, it is often not entirely clear what they will find. Usually the notification that has been received already gives an idea: ‘Animal at height’, ‘animal in water’ or ‘animal in well’, for example. But the less specific ‘animal in trouble’ also occurs. It could be anything. The control room provides the unit that is alarmed with more information about what exactly is going on and what deployment is required.
“We once received applause from 250 school children, which was very cool.”
“With an animal at a height, you often benefit from a ladder truck. But if an animal has fallen into a well, you need the towing team,” explains André van Delst, he is post commander at the fire station in Boekel. That is one of the posts that a technical towing team has in-house. But there is also a surface rescue team, which can perform rescues on the water.
Despite the large arsenal of resources, it often also comes down to the creativity of those firefighters. “You are dealing with animals, they are always unpredictable,” says André. “A cat in a tree can also be quite a challenge. We once had a turnout in Boekel, where 250 school children were watching. We received applause when it was successful. That was very cool.”
“If there’s a cow in a pit, it’s taken out. Anyway.”
But it can also be very different cake. “For example, if animals in a stable have fallen into a manure pit,” says René Hoezen of the fire station in Berlicum. But the unit is also going out for animals in a ditch. Hoezen is the post commander of a technical towing team that can therefore be deployed in such cases. The Boekel and Berlicum posts of the Brabant Noord Fire Brigade are the two posts with a technical tackle team. They go out about 25 times a year. The team was created especially for this.
“Every bet is different,” says André van Delst. “It is absolutely not the case that there is a ‘standard’, but we do have ideas of what we could do in certain situations.” In the end, a solution is always devised.
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