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| Captain Guevara and yours truly. |
Since talking to Captain Guevara, one comment he made has
stuck with me. He said, because of the people’s financial situation, he and his firefighters, would take a greater risk
while fire fighting then we would/should in the U.S.
Emergency responders around the
world use a system called risk/benefit to evaluate if they committing lives and
resources appropriately for different situations.
It works like this: Risk nothing if nothing can be saved.
For example, if flames are blowing out of ever window of a house, there is
nothing left to be saved, so no action which puts firefighters in danger should
be taken. On the flip side, if we know that someone is trapped in a building,
we are willing to take great personal risks to help them. Usually
the way this breaks down for the U.S.
is, lives are worth serious risk to firefighters, whereas viable property is only
worth a very small risk. You can buy a new refrigerator, you can even build a
new house, but you can’t bring people back to life.
But what if you can’t buy a new refrigerator? Because it
took you three years to save up for it, and now your income is barley enough to
send your kids to school. What if you can’t build a new house? Because it’s the
house your family has lived in for four generations. Unlike the U.S. insurance
is pretty much unheard of, especially for the general population. When you lose
something, it’s gone. As for a safety net for people that have a fire or a
flood? It doesn’t exist.
Captain Guevara’s point was: While they use risk benefit,
things have different weights on the Nicaraguan scale then they do in the U.S.
He is willing to take serious risks save a closet or even to pull an appliance
from a burning building, because those things are so hard to replace.
Food for thought.
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