Volunteers: How women extinguish fires - and why they are forbidden
FIRE - ONE OF THE MULTIPLE PROFESSIONSprohibited for women by the Russian Ministry of Labor. The list of such professions has been repeatedly criticized as discriminatory and in many cases contrary to common sense. This is indicated by both women, defending their right to work, and officials (from the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Tatyana Moskalkova to the employees of Russian Railways), but the law continues to operate.
This, of course, does not mean that there are no women in Russia who extinguish fires - they just have to do it on a voluntary basis most often, accepting the lack of social protection, overcoming bureaucratic obstacles and gender prejudices concerning the "non-female" craft. We asked the women volunteer firefighters to tell us what it is.
I never intended to put out fires, it happened quite by accident. In 2010, when peatlands were burning around Moscow, I wrote a blog post saying that I was collecting a bag of things for the victims. Suddenly, this record became popular, I began to bring not only food or things, but also various fire fighting equipment: hoses, backpack fire extinguishers, and so on. At some point, I switched to collecting equipment for volunteer fire brigades, and then went on my first fire in the suburbs.
When the rains started and the fires went out, I thought that the situation could be repeated, and enrolled in Greenpeace Russia courses for fire volunteers, and in the spring of the next year I went on a firefighting expedition to the Astrakhan Biosphere Reserve. For several years I was a volunteer, but in the end fire extinguishing fascinated me so much that I quit my job as an art critic and expert in the culture department of the Moscow government and worked for four years in the press service of Avialesookhran. Now I am back to volunteering again.
In Russia, a woman cannot work as a fireman by law, and I believe that this is wrong. In fact, women work on fires and work a lot. In reality, if a peat, forest or grass fire is suitable for a settlement, then women, naturally, go to work together with men. Foresters often work on fires, simply because they worry about their forest and do not want it to burn. But at the same time, they are not socially protected - they will not receive compensation in case of injury or illness - and this situation cannot be tolerated. The ban on the work of firefighters - it's just a hole in the law, which appeared by mistake, and this must be corrected. Because if a woman wants to work in a fire, if she is trained, physically healthy and follows safety guidelines, she can do it just like a man.
It should be noted that the list of professions that are prohibited for women in Russia, means exactly the work on the edge of the fire. At the same time, according to the law, it is not forbidden to perform ancillary work (for example, to cook), but also to manage, even if you do not extinguish yourself. I took advantage of this loophole and learned to extinguish the head, having received the official right to attend forest fires, although I worked there exclusively as a press officer.
What is interesting is that in the Aviation Protection of Forests from fires - perhaps the most professional structure in Russia among those involved in extinguishing forest fires - women have already been twenty-five years old as forbidden to work as parachutists. Meanwhile, eighty-five years ago, when Avialesookhrana just appeared (by the way, Russia was ahead of everyone here), there were two women in the first squad, and they were the best of the best. There were even a group of parachutists, firefighters, who perfectly coped with the work. Foreign experience proves that the ensuing prohibition is a mistake: in the USA and Europe today many women work as firefighters parachutists. Of course, the standards for physical education and health checks for them are no less stringent than for men, but it should be so.
Now in Russia, fire fighting is considered a purely masculine job. When I flew to Siberia for the first time, the head of Avialesookranya was very worried about me: "If you are scared, you don’t need to fly to the taiga by helicopter, just take a picture of our guys at the airport and come back." By that time, I was already on hundreds of fires as a volunteer, but the men could hardly imagine it, and the very idea that I would live in a tent and go to work caused them to be surprised. Every new group with which I went to the taiga had to prove that working on a fire is not a whim, that I am a professional. However, the jokes quickly stopped when the guys realized that I was serious.
Now I devote a lot of time to volunteering. My colleagues, as a rule, are people who work, they leave for extinguishing either on weekends or during holidays and time off. But both on weekdays and outside the fire season, a lot of cases are still formed. We not only go on fires, but we also regularly learn: professionals almost every year undergo retraining - and so do we. And then there are such things as the development of textbooks, preventive work with the population, especially with children, planting trees. All this takes a lot of time and requires self-discipline. But without self-discipline, there is nothing to do on fires.
It started spontaneously: there were a lot of big fires around Chita, everything was burning - I decided that I could help, and I found a group of volunteers. I went in for sports tourism, went to the mountains, so I was physically prepared; In general, there were no problems, although at first they were looking at me as the only girl in the group. I had to prove that I am no worse than the others - to be better than they, so that they would start listening to me. Now I am a team leader.
This year I was invited to a meeting to prepare for the fire-hazardous season: representatives from the Emergencies Ministry, the State Forest Service, the Ministry of Environment and I were present. We discussed how we will interact. At first they discussed issues of working with the population, and there were no problems. As soon as we turned to extinguishing the fires, they had complaints. They began to say that our activities are illegal and women are not allowed to put out fires. They referred to the instruction on labor protection, to which I replied that, as a volunteer, these rules do not apply to me - I do not have any employment contract. But they have their own logic, they did not listen to any objections and simply ignored the law on volunteers.
Recently, they called me and offered to participate in working with the public. At the same time, they are threatening to ban fire extinguishing - they said that if they notice us in the fire extinguishing zone, protocols will be drawn up as violators. This is not very scary for me, because we have mutual understanding with the Cheats administration, they give us the necessary passes. Firefighters and Emergencies Ministry are always happy to see us: we work well with them, there were no problems before.
In Transbaikalia, most of the territory is occupied by forests, and these are pine forests - they burn very well. The region is not very developed, there are not so many settlements here. People are constantly missing. Often we come, and there is no one, or one or two people. It is not even possible to clear the territory from previous fires, the deadwood is not taken anywhere, and there is little snow. At the end of March, it is no longer there, and the streams are still frozen - it is very difficult to put out fires under such conditions, you have to carry water with you.
Very different people go to volunteers: there are young students, and those who are under fifty. Combining extinguishing fires with the main work is difficult, but we are accustomed to the fact that at the beginning of the year you need to be ready: at this time we usually agree on holidays. Guide knows what we do. If we learn about a fire, we take time off, within an hour we are going and going.
Photo:yvdavid - stock.adobe.com, Sergey Yarochkin - stock.adobe.com