Rescuers Recognized for Life-Saving Efforts
Honors were bestowed upon firefighters and rescuers at a ceremony in Tallinn's Lillepaviljon yesterday.
A total of 62 people received medals of honor. Seventeen Rescue Service workers and two Police and Border Guard Board officials received the Life Saver medal. Two civilians were also recognized, reported ETV.
In one of the most recent fire incidents, Thursday morning at 01:14, firefighters saved seven people, including three children, and also three cats and a parrot, all of whom had been trapped in a burning one-story house in Viljandi. No one required serious medical attention and the fire was extinguished at 04:23.
In another blaze, firefighters Andrei Zapalov and Sergei Menkov, who were among those receiving medals on Wednesday, saved two people from the third-story window of a wooden house on Köleri street in Tallinn. One of people being rescued was initially hanging upside down and one of the firefighters had to conduct a dangerous maneuver, letting his hands free of the ladder, to turn the individual around.
"I don't remember what emotions I was feeling. What I knew was that people needed to be saved, that they couldn't get out on their own, and that's it. There were no more emotions," said Sergei Menkov, head of the downtown fire department. "We train every day and I have been on the job for 25 years, so it's all pretty routine."