Firefighters overwhelmed

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)