Fire Dept: Public has to help on New Year’s by extinguishing small fires

Commander Lucien Groenewegen of the Haaglanden fire brigade calls on people in the large Dutch cities to extinguish small fires themselves during New Year's. In this way they can take some pressure off firefighters on what is traditionally a very busy night for them, he said to the Telegraaf.

"Obviously only when it comes to fires that people can extinguish themselves", Groenewegen said. "Citizens must alert us immediately if people are in danger or cars can catch fire."

The Haaglanden fire department gets around 70 calls on a normal day. This increases to around 700 over New Year's, with which The Hague has the most fire related problems during the turning of the year. In total the fire brigades in the Netherlands are called out between 4 thousand and 5 thousand times on New Year's eve.

"It is therefore logical that citizens are called to help to fight small fires themselves with water or sand", Stephan Wevers, chairman of Brandweer Nederland, said to Het Parool.