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Training and awareness raising, prevention and supervision, firefighting and responding to fire and rescue-related incidents are the main concerns of the firefighters in Hatay. The changing nature of the emergency situations; meaning earthquakes, landslides, floods and especially fires and other fire and rescue-related incidents in Hatay province, with its already strained capacity, have caused before, loss of life and injuries, along with financial losses and other unrecoverable losses leading to damages to national wealth, welfare and cultural, historical and natural heritages.
Recently released metropolitan municipality regulations have also expanded metropolitan municipalities responsibilities to cover district and village level firefighting services, which has added new pressure to the demand side. Municipalities in the Southern provinces have indicated a significant increase in terms of the demand for firefighting services, particularly in urban settings.
Fevzi Bey, who devoted his life to the service of the people of Hatay, at Municipal Firefighting Department, now a senior advisor to the Mayor, explained the situation; “We are serving both local communities and Syrian refugees with limited resources. It’s been eight years since the Syria crisis began, but our needs have grown faster than what we got”. When drinking his tea in the meeting room while briefing us on the capacities and needs of the Firefighting Department, he added “UNDP’s support is most valuable to us, not only providing vehicles that increased our capacity, but also infrastructure development and technical support with respect to municipal services”