Thank you BA Bomberos and Policia

[erian]

Just a quick shoutout to the Bomberos and Policia!

Woke up 6am this morning in Capital, to banging on the door and shouting.
Turned out an apartment had gone on fire. We were on the sixth floor. The hall was full of smoke. It was serious to say the least.

A policeman came runnning up the stairs, no breathing apparatus or anything and was telling everyone to go down quickly, he was knocking on doors shouting etc. He had come up through quite a lot of smoke and as he was first on the scene he was acting as a fireman and to be fair was putting himself at a lot of risk to empty the building.

He was up and down constantly. I was coughing quite a bit and still can feel my throat (nearly 11 hours later), so I imagine how he felt. The firemen took over and worked quickly and sorted it out.


So THANK YOU!!! MUCHAS GRACIAS!!! mightn't be writing this if you hadn't acted as you had!!

 

[Aleina Dee]

Glad you told the tale and glad you are here to tell the tale.

 

[va2ba]

We may complain about the police and their lack of action but sometimes, but its good to know that there are some truly good people on the BA police force who will come through when its needed most.

Thanks for posting this.

 

[earlyretirement]

Fortunately fires are so rare in Buenos Aires since the construction is all with concrete and bricks and not the crack wooden construction in the USA. I lived in Buenos Aires many years and only saw a firetruck a few times.

You do hear a lot about the corrupt police but I agree with the OP there are good officers as well.

A few years ago a friend of mine that owned an apartment in Palermo had smoke coming from his apartment. Apparently, there was a power surge to the building from Edesur that caused the electricity to go out in the building. In his unit it caused a transformer to overheat and it had smoke coming out. Someone noticed it and called the fire department.

He was in the USA at the time but I had a power of attorney on it. So the building administrator called me in the middle of the night. They said there had been a fire. I rush over there and the door lock was smashed as the fire department had to break it to enter to see where the smoke was coming from.

I couldn't see much as there was no electricity. I did have a flashlight. I was surprised to see a police officer sleeping on the sofa. He quickly woke up. Apparently when they have to break open the door and no one is home, they assign an officer to stay there until someone comes. I was really pleasantly surprised to see that. I just had to show the police officer the power of attorney and he left and turned the apartment over to me.

Some things actually work in Argentina....I was impressed by that incident. They told me to notify the police department if something was missing. But nothing was missing.