Firefighters overwhelmed

JAKARTA (JP): Firefighters admitted Saturday that they could do very little during last week's three-day orgy of burning throughout the city.

"Frankly speaking, we are overwhelmed because so many buildings caught fire in so many places at the same time," said Johnny Pangaribuan, a senior official at the city fire department.

Pangaribuan said extinguishing fires in time of massive rioting was a risky job because an angry was likely to turn on the firefighters unless they had military protection.

In most cases, requests for fire trucks were turned down due to the lack of protection from security officers, he admitted, as reported by Antara.

Besides, as a security precaution, the department would only dispatch two fire trucks at the most to each blazing building, he said.

"Yesterday, one of our fire trucks was destroyed by an angry mob," he said. (pan)