RESCUERS TELL OF KIDS TRAPPED IN HOT CARS
▶ Officers describe difficult incidents and how they were affected by them
Far too many children are being left locked in hot cars, police emergency crews said, and parents have to be more vigilant if they want to avoid tragedy.
Children or even animals suffocating in stiflingly hot cars are sadly never far from the news during the summer and Dubai Police search-and-rescue staff say parents need to be aware of where their children are at all times.
“We ask parents to be extra careful about children being locked in their vehicles. We deal with rescuing children from hot vehicles continuously,” said Capt Mohammed Ahmed, 49. “We rush to the site and we manage to free the child in less than two minutes,” he said, although sometimes it can be too little, too late.
That was the case in June when two sisters – Moza, four, and two-year-old Hafsa Al Balooshi – died after being trapped in their father’s car outside their home in Al Jurf, Ajman for two hours. Police said at the time that they were playing and had entered the car and the vehicle had auto-locked while their father was at noon prayers at a neighbourhood mosque.
One particular incident that stuck in the mind of rescuer Yousef Ahmed Obaid, 35, was of a boy trapped in a car; it was in summer 2014.
“I arrived at the scene and dealt with the situation professionally,” said Mr Obaid, who has been a rescuer for 14 years. “I and other rescuers managed to get the child out of the car and his mother immediately rushed to him, hugged him and burst into tears. She started to put water on her son while she was crying overwhelmingly.
“This was such a touching, human situation and it affected me immensely.
“Saving others’ lives has added value to my life. Since then, I decided to carry on with this job and save more lives.”
Inevitably in a country where car crashes are so prevalent, these incidents make up the bulk of the search-and-rescue department’s work, but with so many people on the roads, when an accident occurs, people trying to help can end up being a hindrance instead.
“There are challenges even before arriving. Our main task is to reach an accident victim at high speed, but sometimes motorists do not give way to rescue vehicles because either they do not care or have loud music on,” Mr Obaid said. “Rescuers have been through situations where members of the public were trying to pull someone out of the car and ended up hurting their spinal cords.”
First warrant officer Mohammed Ahmed Al Saad said the job of a rescuer not only requires quick thinking and an ability to work under pressure, but it demands a thick skin, because incidents live with them.
“I dealt with a man and wife and their children who were in a major accident,” he said. “We reached the scene to find that the man and the woman had succumbed to their injuries. Their daughter was sitting near her mother thinking she was asleep and it really affected me.”