UNPREPARED FIREFIGHTERS AND A VICTIM OF THE FIRE

After a massive fire in the minimarket, one victim died due to unqualified firefighters. They confessed that they were not trained to apply oxygen for the victim. But how can an individual be a so called firefighter if they are untrained for accomplishing some duties?

During the night of 04.09.2010, fire consumed a minimarket in Halba, North Lebanon, with till now unexplained reason. At first, this minimarket located in the ground floor has an access for its owner home located in the first floor. At the beginning of the fire, almost all residents of the home escaped from this tragedy, except one person.

This person got entrapped in the home due to excessive quantity of smoke in the building. With the arrival of the firefighters, the hope of rescuing this person was boosted. But for neighborhood surprises, they had no oxygen supply for the entrapped victim. The red cross also arrived after some instants; And for our surprise, they also had no oxygen supply. The neighbors started trying to find a way of rescuing the victim while the firefighter was extinguishing the fire. Now I have a question for the readers.

What is the role of a firefighter?

As the dictionary explained firefighter is somebody who attempts to control or extinguish fires and to rescue people or animals from danger. But the latter did not happen! After 30 minutes one of the neighbors got an oxygen container for the victim. However, here is another surprise; the firefighters were not trained to do such thing as one of them confessed. Also they are not physically prepared to work as a firefighter. For instance, only two firefighters were present. Both were old men, above 50’s, and one of them had done an open heart surgery. Thus, Were they unqualified to work as a firefighter?

As a consequence, the victim died suffocated.

I am not here to tell you the facts of this tragedy. Otherwise, this is just an alert for the society.

Red Cross and firefighter should be at least capable of exerting their roles. There are a lot of people, young people, capable to work on it; why do old man still handle it if he is physically inadequate?. Also, trainings must be done…

If only these simple things were done, at least maybe this victim would not have died

by kmakhoul

Types of preservation: which one is your version ?

What cannot be missed in your diary “agenda” of beneficial attitudes are the three “R’s”

Reducing …your garbage

It is time to transform the unsustainable consume into conscious consume. The act of reducing is more important than recycling, since, for sure; you diminish your garbage production. In this way, you will be avoiding the impacts which excess of garbage provoke for the ecosystem, environment and health. One good thing to do is asking yourself whether you are buying what is really necessary or not. Are there other ways of consumption without discarding a lot of garbage? These two tips answers will indicate your own way of preservation

Recycling ... our mind

A place where garbage of the whole city is disposed is ending, and the costs with "deposit” services are increasing constantly, almost exponentially. It is time to decrease the amount of residue and reutilizes it. In other words, we should place our garbage or at least part of them back into the cycle of production from where they came before… new products are produced with less environmental exploitation. YOU MUST BE ASKING YOUR SELF WHAT IS YOUR CONTRIBUTION IN ALL THIS PROCESS. Your contribution is known as separation of sources. Ecologist and biologist explain this process in an easy and simple way. It is the separation or segregation of recyclable materials in our home. It means that the segregation of the different source recyclable materials in your house. It will help the in collection of residues. Segregate the metals, glasses, plastics, papers. If in your city or country has a program of selective collection of different recyclable materials. It is good, but in reality not all cities in Lebanon. However, whether it has or not , the idea is to take your segregated garbage in the recycling stations. Also, you can give it to people who can take them to the stations.

Reutilizing …..your knowledge

For a better understanding, the difference of between reducing and recycling can be explained in this example: if you printed a paper, read it and then you probably should get rid of it, right? Hein, you can still utilize the back portion of the paper as scratch paper. Reutilizing means using again the same material as a scratch paper for other works, for instance. After the "complete" integral use of the paper, you can separate it to the recycling. This is just an example; use your creativity to reutilize other material which you consumed and it is good beginning …LET START TOGETHER, FOR A BETTER WORLD.

by kmakhoul

Time to change our attitudes

Let this summer be the beginning of some changes in your life.

Start from now with ecological attitudes that you can add as your habits day by day. Why not as soon as you wake up have shorter showers? Remember that the potable water is in few quantities, around 2% of the total amount of water, so that is why we need to reduce its usage. Most of the deodorants contain chloroflourocarbnates known as CFC's. The best thing to do is to substitute CFC pollutants by deodorants like roll on or stick.

Papers that are constantly used can be recycled, even the plastic sac and bag utilized in supermarkets and shops should be replaced by ecobags which are friendly for the environment. Also, instead of taking our car everyday single day, why not we leave our car in the garage? Walking or even taking a ride with some else from neighborhood or family members can be more beneficial to the ecosystem.

Recycle cans, bottles, and plastic materials since they are the worst enemies for the nature, it takes decades, or even centuries to be eliminated or decomposed by the environmental factors

However, these small attitudes and habits led to benefits for the nature. Finally, try at least to plant a tree or a simple ornamental plant due to its power of purification and well aeration; not only will be our neighborhood more protected but also the whole world.

So as you can notice the world is in our hand; do not let such these small things jeopardize our nature, and consequently OUR LIVES

We are Citizen Journalists

Throughout these three sessions, group of journalist from the Hibr journal held workshops under the name "Empowering Communities Through Media" in Halba. There, several active people obtained knowledge about how it is simple to any individual to be a bridge between the general society and any event happening. They are called citizen journalist and they utilized the web 2.0 such as twitter, Gmail, flickr and blog to spread the information or current events where no necessity to be a journalist is needed. Now they are up to write and publish any information that they might encounter in their daily life

As a group of participants of this workshop, we can clearly admit that after this workshop we are now able to develop our community throughout the media. We had the possibility of writing and publishing about the Halba roads situation, also in another session we interviewed the vice president of municipality about the electricity and the road blockage in Minie. In the third session, we learned the power of the image and video as a way to impress and to make a change in the world



Finally, media is a method through which we are able to spread awareness, and to enhance our society. Thanks for all Hibr members for giving us this opportunity

IMPRUDENT ATTITUDES LED TO FATAL CONSEQUENCES

During a weekend trip in Qamoua, in Akkar, North Lebanon,a family doing a picnic caused the forest wildfires damaging the whole ecosystem of the surrounding nature

,

As an attractive natural area, Qamoua has an exotic panorama where Lebanese families go to entertain their kids and family. However, this weekend was different; after a group of people did their barbecue, the fired cool was got ridden in the dry grass field. Instantaneously, the fire was spread all over the camping place, several Cedar trees were burned in an around 15km2 or more of green area. This family, afraid of being repressed and punished by their act, escaped from Qamoua without helping or even calling the firefighters

Several other families, including some members of environmental scout tried to fight against this tremendous disaster; however, this was not enough. After the arrival of the Lebanese army to the fired placed, firefighters got into the place with the delay of 30 minutes and controlled the vanished wildfire area

Attitudes like this one can not be acceptable, several tens of ancient Cedar trees and other species of trees were totally destroyed. Qamoua is not anymore green and natural as it was. But the worst was the coward act the guilty family who escaped without presenting theirselves to the authorities

طرقات وهموم حلبا

تشهد طرقات حلبا عدداً كبيراً من الحفر إذ يشتكي منها أهل المنطقة، ومن تأثيرها السّلبي على السّيارات. فليس هناك وجود مواقف ولا أرصفة كما أنّ الطرقات غير مؤهلة لأعداد كبيرة من السيارات رغم أنّ حلبا مركزاً لقضاء عكار.

كما عرض الأهالي مشاكل وهموم عديدة منها: المازوت وغياب الأرصة ومواقف السّيارات وحوادث السّير بدون رقابة.