Fire figures rocket

6th January 2012

Poland’s firefighters were kept busy over the New Year period with a total 551 reported fires up and down the country.

According to daily Fakt, four people were killed as a direct result of the fires and a further 15 were left with injuries.

Pawel Fratczak, official spokesman for Poland’s state fire service (PSP), told PAP news agency that many of the fires were caused by the bangers and fireworks that people were using to help celebrate the turn of the year.

“In total we were called out 1015 times over the course of the whole day. Throughout the entire country, there were 551 fires - 240 of which occurred between the hours of midnight and 6 AM,” he stated.

He went on to add that a large percentage of the call outs were due to people failing to observe the basic safety rules when setting off their fireworks.

“Most of the cases we dealt with were just simple, small fires on balconies, in garbage cans and on the roofs of buildings and the majority of these we were able to extinguish fairly quickly,” said the spokesman. “However, in Warsaw alone, our firefighters were required to put out 30 separate fires, the majority of which occurred during the night.”