SANTA ANA : Firefighter’s Russia Trip Proves Helpful

When a building catches fire and smoke begins filling hallways, panicked occupants need to know the fastest, safest way outside.

Unfortunately, says Battalion Chief Tim Graber of the Santa Ana Fire Department, exit signs intended to point the way out often fail those who cannot read or do not understand English. The price is paid in lives lost, he said.

For that problem, Graber may have an answer, one that he discovered during a recent trip to Russia as part of an informal international exchange program for firefighters.

There, Graber, 43, found that easy-to-understand symbols--instead of words--show emergency fire exits. Russians use a running figure with flames behind it to denote fire exits.

Graber, who paid for the 17-day trip himself, returned June 12. Accompanied by his wife, Janis, he visited St. Petersburg because it resembles Santa Ana in both size and its mix of commercial, industrial and residential areas.

One difference between cultures that Graber noticed almost immediately was that Russians often ignore sirens. Pedestrians and motorists insist on their right of way, even if doing so stops firetrucks in their tracks.

Although some of the Russians’ methods suggested valuable ways to improve fire safety here, Graber said that for the most part his visit reaffirmed the quality of U.S. firefighting techniques.

“I was very surprised that the greatest industrialized nation besides ourselves was so behind in updating their roads and buildings and fire equipment,” he said. “Their fire engines carried some water, some hoses, but none of the adjunct tools we have to accomplish our jobs,” such as bolt cutters, battering rams for doors and equipment for pulling people out of cars.

Also, Russian firefighters do few of the things that Americans take for granted.

“They go to a fire, put it out and leave,” Graber said. “They carry hoses and that’s it. They don’t go to traffic accidents, they don’t get cats out of trees.”

The week before his visit, Russian television aired several episodes of “Rescue 911.” In one show, firefighters responded to a call for help from an elderly woman who had fallen out of her bed and could not get up.

Later, during Graber’s stay, an identical situation occurred, but the elderly woman was told that firefighters only put out fires and could not help. The woman protested, saying that she had seen firefighters on TV help out and demanded that they come. The firefighters relented and went to the scene.

After learning that the show accurately portrayed how U.S. firefighters perform their duties, one Russian fire official had “tears in his eyes and crushed my hand and thanked me for being a true professional,” Graber said.

He suggested to his hosts that they should prepare for when Russians begin demanding more of the services that their Western counterparts provide. To help show how to provide those services, Graber will play host to a fire official from St. Petersburg in the next few months.

Exchanges are crucial for improving fire safety everywhere, he said.

“There’s always something that other fire departments can learn from us, and we can always, always learn from them,” Graber said.