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Houses Burnt Down Two Kilometers Away from Fire-Brigade Office

December 22, 2008

Gulo Kokhodze, Akhaltsikhe

In the evening of December 18 sudden fire seriously damaged four houses in Ketevan Tsamebuli Str. in Akhaltsikhe. Since telephone does not work at the office of fire-brigade the rescue team arrived at the place half an hour later. It must be noted that the service office is located two kilometers away from Ketevan Tsamebuli Street.

Supposedly, the fire originated from the oven in one of four houses. The fire later spread on the roofs of the neighboring houses. The fire did not end with victims, inhabitants managed to escape their homes safely. The house of Mzia Kapanadze in Ketevan Tsamebuli str. # 6 was the most damaged; 70 % of it is burnt.

We were unable to rescue anything, and the fire appeared quite suddenly. Part of furniture burnt down; another part was damaged and cannot be used,” said Mzia Kapanadze. A large part of the Piltakians, residents of the same street, also had their houses burnt. A 70-year-old married couple Sergei and Lusika Piltakians were withdrawn from burning house with the help of neighbors.

“They were asleep and could not feel the heat of fire. If not for neighbors they would have died in the smoke,” said the relative of the Piltakians.

The residents of the street were fighting the fire with bear hands. People called the service office of the Fire Brigade in Akhaltsikhe district at 8:15 PM. Paata Lekishvili, the head of the fire service office, states that the first team of fire brigade went to the place of incident immediately; second and third brigades followed soon.
“Because of scale of the fire we announced the urgent situation. We were called half an hour after the fires started and time gave the fire time to heat up and it has hard to put out,” said Paata Lekishvili. As it was threat of spreading the fire they called fire brigades from Borjomi, Adigeni and Abastumani.

Service center of “Amenities Ltd” arrived at the place of incident too but because of dense population, it was difficult for the fire brigades to put out fire.

“The roads to the place of accident were blocked with cars. Patrol police soon managed to clean the roads. The water was getting frozen because of fire and it hindered our work,” said Paata Lekishvili.

However, the witnesses claim the opposite and state that fire brigade could not put out the fire because of technical problems.

“They had narrow fire hoses and could not fix to the fire engine,” said residents of the Ketevan Tsamebuli Street.

It took four hours to put out the fire. People from fire service office claim that cars are in order. The problem is about communication system that does not work in their office and in case of an incident, people should personally apply to their office for help. Not everybody knows mobile-phone number of the head of the service office.

“Since we get information late, we cannot put out the fire soon and we have to spend hours on the scene which might otherwise have been resolved in ten minutes,” said the head of the service office.

“What telephone they are speaking about? Boys immediately rushed to their office because it is quite close and why should we call them on telephone,” residents of the street are surprised as to what all has transpired.

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