2023-06-06 14:00:00
The twenty-year-old Ernesto Alejandro González Prieto with the firefighters was love at first sight. Since seventh grade, at José de la Luz y Caballero High School, in Guanajay, the strategic position of his classroom in front of the fire station left him fascinated with sirens and adrenaline.
One day they went to school to recruit for a circle of interest, and he wanted to get acquainted with the work. He participated in municipal and provincial activities, contests…, until joining the ninth grade as a volunteer firefighter.
“Nobody in my family wanted me to be a firefighter because of the risk, but that didn’t change my mind. Even as a volunteer, he spent his vacations there, ready to render any service.
“From my contact with them I realized how beautiful this work is. That reaffirmed my decision to stay, which is why every day at the end of classes, I would go down the street and join the daily tasks”.
The romance could not be broken by the specialty of skilled worker in mechanics, which came to him after finishing high school. Ernesto Alejandro dropped out of the polytechnic, after consulting with his parents. “I continued my preparation, based on observation, constant questions to my colleagues and my presence in several fires.” However, he was looking for new experiences, for which he moved to the Special Command number 2 of Mariel.
“I remember my first encounter with a large-scale fire, in a fuel tanker in front of the Máximo Gómez Thermoelectric Plant.” His concern later led him to dominate the rescue and salvage activity in the provincial detachment located in Mariel.
“I provided services in all the municipalities, so that, when I was only 15 years old, I faced very painful situations such as the transfer of deceased people, some of my same age. The first time I got very tense, I didn’t want to get close to the victim.”
The adolescent’s work led to the invitation to pass the course for intermediate managers at the San Antonio de los Baños Unit. From the age of 17 to date, Ernesto Alejandro has been the head of a company in Mariel, an industrial town with a high risk of fire.
“In this period, several have occurred with serious consequences for the economy, such as the one at the textile warehouse in Guanajay, in which dozens of rolls of fabric were affected. The tobacco shop in San Antonio de los Baños also burned, but I was not working, and then, the incident at unit seven of the Máximo Gómez Thermoelectric Plant.
“That day I was also off; instead, I called to find out the facts and left at 10 pm ready to arrive at any cost, while at home my mother and grandmother were crying. At the scene, I verified the complexity of the fire and complied with the order to prevent its spread to unit eight. We worked all night until we achieved our goal.”
Fate and his responsibility have separated him from other recent disasters: the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel, where they sent the province’s rescue and rescue technique; and the misfortune at the supertanker base in Matanzas. However, “we always kept abreast of the performance of our colleagues.”
More recently, he laments the loss of a colleague from Artemisa in an accident, in the place known as Loma de Cañitas. There are so many risks, “that protective equipment is reviewed daily.
“The work of a firefighter is very complex: we not only put out fires, we must deal with gas leaks, chemical substances, animal rescues, emergency services, short circuits…, which requires maximum training.
“Fear is part of life, but it cannot paralyze us,” says Ernesto Alejandro. Perhaps firefighters are among the professionals with the most tools to defy death, guided by three concepts: honor, discipline and courage.
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