LECCE – Summer is upon us and the fire brigade staff is understaffed with the mirage of holidays, the risk of fires, the exhausting shifts. Borderline situations have become routine at the Lecce provincial fire brigade command which is grappling with its darkest crisis in terms of lack of operational figures: compared to the staffing plan, 92 workers are missing; today there are 88 of them operating, but there should be 180 in the offices of Lecce, Gallipoli, Maglie, Tricase and Veglie.
Pasquale Cirillo, territorial coordinator of the FP Cgil Lecce – Fire Brigade, describes the situation: “Urgent technical rescue services are now based exclusively on the minimum number necessary for their composition. This means that in the various locations we have staff management close to collapse, in which it is increasingly difficult to grant holidays, necessary for psychophysical recovery, in which stressful shifts, in which the team is literally busy for twelve consecutive hours to shut down the fires or other types of interventions are routine,” explains the trade unionist.
The summer period is historically the period in which the Lecce Command is most under stress. From the end of May to the end of September, the Salento firefighters guarantee on average 7,000 emergency technical rescue interventions (around 60 per day) to put out summer fires, intervene in road accidents, rescue people, put out fires in houses. “The rescue device deployed refers to five ordinary teams, three supports, one forest team for the entire period, i.e. from 15 June to 15 September. Furthermore, the forestry team partially doubled for a month, roughly starting from mid-July”, explains Cirillo. “This means that even just a minimal inconvenience, an unforeseen absence, an illness would be enough to create severe discomfort, to the point of sending the entire Command into crisis”.
The administration is obviously trying to take action, with the request for the extraordinary and temporary transfer of a large number of operational units resident in Lecce but currently working in other commands. A request that has not yet received any response. The alternative to buffer the summer crisis is a greater involvement of the volunteer units present in the Ugento detachment, which however often struggles to form a team due to the absence of specific professional figures (such as drivers or team leaders). “These operational units available to carry out the service could be used to complete the teams in the various provincial detachments. Given that today it is not always possible to cover the shift entirely.”
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