KUALA LUMPUR – Firefighters are always on duty. There is no downtime and their minds are never at rest, knowing that a million things could go wrong when they are on the job.
Besides dousing blazes and responding to accidents, they are also trained to handle big animals – yes, bigger than families’ beloved cats that get stuck in trees and need firemen’s help coming down.
Officer Mohd Rezdduan Mohd Abdullah from the Kota Anggerik fire station said animals deserve a good life, whether pets, strays, or those in the wild.
When a distress call comes in, regardless of the nature of the incident, personnel will be dispatched to the scene within 60 seconds, he said.
With the help of netizens, firefighters have, of late, received more recognition from the public for their animal rescues.
“Before this, people would only associate us with firefighting, but now, with platforms like Facebook Live and TikTok, there are viral videos of us that show our job scope is pretty big,” said Rezdduan.
Senior officer Noor Fazida Tina Mohamad Noor of the Rawang station, also known as “Queen of the King Cobra Squad”, said some of the rescued animals end up being adopted by fire personnel themselves.
Asked about firefighters being called to handle stray or wild animals, such as dogs and wild boars, the duo stressed that the potentially dangerous nature of these creatures does not deter them from giving their all, nor does personnel’s ethnicity or religion get in the way.
“There is no problem for us to rescue these animals, because to us, there is no difference between dogs, cats, boars and so on. When they need rescuing, it is our duty to rescue them,” said Rezdduan.
“With regard to dogs, there is no issues at all, we can ‘samak’ (purification according to Islam) right after rescuing them. It’s not like we’re going to eat them.” – The Vibes, August 14, 2021
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