People who attack or mob the rescue workers – BZ editor-in-chief Miriam Krekel will never understand them Photo: Spreepicture
By Miriam Krekel
There are things in our society that I will never understand.
And while I’m actually so happy to live in a city like Berlin and that my children were born and grow up here, while I like most people so much, I will never understand some of them. This includes those who attack the police and firefighters, who scold them, insult them, and also those who don’t finally ensure that working conditions improve.
My colleague Axel Lier and his colleagues from the BZ police department have been reporting for years on the mismanagement of the authorities, on the almost daily state of emergency at the fire brigade. Now our reporter has accompanied those fighting the major fire in Grunewald under the most dangerous conditions into the forbidden zone for the first time. The pictures show the full extent of the destruction: burned soil, dying trees. The only good news is that the fires at the blast site have now been extinguished.
Again and again rescuers have to deal with completely different struggles: people who attack them for no reason. A man attacked an ambulance in Weißensee – just because the sirens were too loud for him. A gawker gave firefighters the finger in a serious accident on the A 2 near Wollin beer while drinking and sneered with his buddy. While in the burning truck the driver died.
Actions like this show how pathetic it is to attack those who help other people – often risking their own lives in the process.