Wildfires

I vaguely remember seeing Bambi in the movie theaters a long time ago. My mom says that I wasn’t really afraid of anything during the movie except when the fores fires started. A bit strange if you consider my current profession, don’t you think? This bout of nostalgia was brought on by me bumping into SmokeyBear.com and seeing their ad which features a snippet from Bambi.

Luckily we’ve had a peaceful spring so far when it comes to wildfires, hopefully the summer will remain so. And remember to be a responsible user of fire – even cigarettes!

SmokeyBear.com: only you can prevent wildfires

Crashing cars

Seriocomic’s latest entry once again reminded me how much I’d like to be able to carry a camera around when responding to the calls we get. There are many accidents, fires, etc. that I’d love taking pictures of but can’t. The small point-and-shoot we have in our engine just doesn’t cut it. Luckily our captain just told me to get bids for digital cameras for all of our engines… Driving around in your own car must be fun when you can have your own camera with you. I’m jealous.

Why is it that people can’t seem to remember how to drive during the winter. In the last few weeks we’ve had some uncommonly strong snowstorms that have caused many fatal crashes. I can’t understand why drivers can’t take into consideration the simple fact that 10 cm of snow on the road means that it is slippery. Even youth and inexperience shouldn’t be an excuse since most allready have experience riding bicycles in the snow and on the ice.

And don’t get me started on the drivers in Southern Finland. In the news last night a garage owner down south (near Helsinki) said that drivers are surprised when they leave the larger, dry roads and enter smaller roads with snow and ice on them. This is Finland in the winter time we are talking about. Snow and ice are a part of normal winter driving conditions. Well, at least the garage owners are seeing Euro signs in their eyes.

And now it really is time to stop procrastinating and get back to finishing that EU report. Ugh.

Photography and privacy

I’ve been following various discussions related to publishing photographs and the right to privacy of the subjects in the pictures. Partly of followed them because of my work and how the pictures that rescue (fire) departments take may be quite a breach in privacy.

In part the inspiration for this post has come from an article (via Kari Haakana) in Poynter and the reasons (via MeFi) why the New York times published the selected front-page picture of some of the child victims of the tsunami. While the reasons why the press wants to and can publish certain images differs in some cases from personal publishing, the basic ethical principles are the same and the same laws apply. While I will discuss the matters with respect to my understaning of applicable Finnish law, I feel that the principles are applicable in other parts of the world as well.

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On tornados

Finland has been safe from natural disasters for a long time. We don’t have any strong earthquakes (some tremors that seismologists register but are rarely felt), any volcanoes, or any other sort of strong natural phenomena. Of course we’ve had our fair share of strong winds and thunderstorms, but even then the wind speeds rarely reach gale force. In the last few years things have begun changing though.

I started writing this entry before the events on boxing day. Or the exceptional winter stroms Southern Finland and the rest of the Baltic countries have been experiencing. Lately nature has been reminding us of its power.

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Monte Carlo firefighting

I know I’m making a bit of a gamble here with the title. After all, the category is rescue and the gist of the title comes from Computer Science, algorithm design and analysis to be more precise. The two fields couldn’t be much further apart…

FireHouse.com had an article yesterday on how small towns that rely on volunteers or oncall firefighters have problems in getting enough personnel to respond to calls, especially during the daytime. It is nice to notice that the same problems plague the States as Finland in this respect.

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