Arben Cara reacts after being dismissed as head of the Fire Service: No one asked me what decisions were made in those critical minutes; fires are not put out…

Former Director General of the Fire Protection and Rescue Service Arben Cara has reacted after being removed from office, accusing the authorities of mishandling the wildfire situation in the country.

Cara said that “fires are not fought with news reports and photographs,” implying the need for greater commitment and concrete measures on the ground.

His removal from the leadership of the Fire Protection and Rescue Service came at the height of the severe wildfire situation in several areas of the country. It was initially reported as a resignation, but documents and reports later emerged indicating that Interior Minister Besfort Lamallari had revoked, on August 10, the order delegating Cara authority to lead the service.

Arben Cara’s post:

A decision made in six minutes and judged for six months!

Fire cannot be equated with water and equipment. Thinking this way is a doctrine that leads you toward the wrong decisions. Throughout my career, at every meeting, in every report and on every television program after a major fire, the question has almost always been the same:

How many vehicles did you have? Almost no one has asked me:

What decisions were made during those few critical minutes?

We have built a culture in which seriousness is measured by countable things:

🚒 How many fire engines were deployed.

💧 How many tons of water were dropped.

🚁 How many flights the helicopter made.

✈️ How many aircraft came from abroad.

These numbers look good, can be photographed and have one indisputable quality: they can be counted. But no matter how large the figure, it is not enough.

If the fire is extinguished, we say: the equipment put it out. If the fire is not extinguished, we say: the equipment was not enough. In both cases, no one was at fault. And the request for the following year is once again the same:

“We need more equipment 🚒🚔🚑.”

I have seen major fires lost with 20 vehicles on the ground and major fires won with five. The difference was not always the quantity. The difference was whether someone had thought, in the first hour, about where the fire would be in the fourth hour.

🧠 Fire requires a mind…

I am going to say something that may not win me much sympathy, but it is true and every professional who has led a major fire knows it:

An aircraft cannot put out a major fire on its own.

It slows one flank, cools one front and buys minutes.

The final work is done by people on the ground: with a fire line, a team and hand tools. If there is no team to immediately consolidate the area after the drop, the water evaporates and the fire may return.

But the aircraft has another feature:

✈️ It flies across the eight o’clock news.

It tells citizens that the state has arrived. It closes the public debate for 24 hours. But a fire does not end simply because the flames are no longer visible. Do not look only at the high, searing flames.

🔥 Smoldering combustion can continue in the humus layer, among roots, inside hollow trunks and in piles of leaves. This burning can move slowly while retaining heat for a long time.

This is the “ignored” danger.

The one that causes extensive damage. The one for which no one often takes responsibility, because no one understands where the wrong decision was made. Because the commander saw the flames subside and left.

The cooling phase was not considered an operation, the entire perimeter was not inspected and the cause was not investigated. And when I say the cause, I do not mean only the arsonist.

🧭 Nine principles for a fire commander

1️⃣ Decide based on the future, not the present

The vehicle that leaves now may arrive in 40 minutes, at a completely different fire. Every decision is made in response to the projected fire, not only the one that has been reported.

The commander does not ask only:

Where is the fire?

He assesses:

Where will the fire be when the team arrives there?

2️⃣ A calm decision in the fifth minute is better than a panicked decision in the third hour. The commander must establish the criteria in advance, not improvise responses. If the wind changes direction and crosses a predetermined threshold, the sector is withdrawn. If the front crosses a certain line, the evacuation begins. A good decision is one that was considered before it became urgent.

3️⃣ Decide within the rhythm of the fire, not within the rhythm of the institution. The faster the fire, the shorter the hierarchy must be.

🔥 Fire does not wait for paperwork.

🔥 Fire does not wait for a meeting.

🔥 Fire does not wait for a long chain of approvals.

4️⃣ Build the command structure in the first hour

The most valuable thing a commander does is not issue endless tactical orders. It is to build the structure that will support the orders to come, including:

• Command.

• Communication.

• Sectors.

• Information.

• Safety.

• Logistics.

5️⃣ Without continuity in tactics, there is no strategy

A commander who reacts only to what he sees at any given moment is not directing the fire. He is following the fire. Strategy changes when conditions change.

6️⃣ Make decisions while always knowing where the people are

👨‍🚒 No tactical objective is more important than the safety of the team.

The commander must know:

Where are the people? Where will they be? Where will they exit? What danger is approaching?

7️⃣ Rank the non-negotiable priorities…

1. ❤️ The lives of firefighters

2. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The lives of the population

3. 🛡️ Stabilization of the situation

4. 🏠 Property

5. 🌲 The environment

6. 🦘 Livestock and other living creatures, etc..@

Priorities do not change because media pressure changes.

8️⃣ Ask: Is this method physically feasible?

Flame length, thermal radiation, wind, terrain and fire behavior are physical limits, not suggestions. You cannot order a team to enter a situation that physically does not allow them to survive.

Tactics must obey physics.

9️⃣ Withdrawal and evacuation are not failures

↩️ Withdrawal is competence.

🚨 Evacuation is a command decision.

A good commander is not measured only by how many meters he advanced. He is also measured by whether he understood in time when he needed to stop, withdraw and change the plan.

⚠️ But nine principles do not solve every fire

Neither nine nor 19, because principles do not make decisions. People do.

And people make decisions according to how they have been trained to think, not simply according to how they have been ordered to act. A memorized list has never saved a situation. What matters is training in critical thinking, experience, simulation and a culture of command.

🎯 Ultimately, the problem is not only how much equipment we have

An aircraft may cost as much as a very large portion of a service’s annual budget. A person trained to think clearly during critical minutes costs much less.

And here is the paradox: We invest millions in the capacity to respond, but far less in the capacity to make decisions. Every summer, we make the same choice.

And every September, we pay for it.

🔥 Fire is not fought with water alone.

🚒 It is not fought with equipment alone.

✈️ It is not fought from the air alone.

Fire is fought through the right decision, at the right time, by the right person. Because a good decision does not always make for television. It is not photographed, it is not counted in a report and it does not always become news.

But it has one feature:

Its positive consequences are invisible.

Because they are precisely the things that did not happen.

And that may be a fire commander’s greatest success.

On August 17, Lamallari presented Ervis Gjoshi as the acting head of the General Directorate of Fire Protection and Rescue.

Cara’s reaction comes at a time when the country continues to face wildfires and debates over how the situation is being managed, while his removal has raised questions about the reasons and circumstances surrounding the decision./SHEKULLI