Hongkou Firemen Fight Flood in Anhui

Hongkou fireman Ye Changfu fights a flood with teammates in Anhui.

Photo by the Hongkou Fire Brigade

By Gu Li

"It's really heart-wrenching to see some people struggling in the water and some with hands on the window waiting for us," said Ye Changfu, a fireman from Hongkou Jiangwan Fire Station. Recently, Ye has just completed nearly a month's flood fighting and rescue. From the beginning, Ye worked more than 13 hours a day, now he keeps strengthening the rescue technology every day, and is always ready to join the next mission.

Ye Changfu, the Fighter, signs up to fight the flood.

The teammates commend Ye that "Ye participates in fire-fighting and rescue more than 9,000 times", "Ye saves more than 500 people in danger", and "he is rated as ‘Excellent CPC Member' many times". Rated as the Fighter, Ye shows up when there is danger. After the flood disaster happens in Anhui, Ye immediately volunteers to fight the flood. Although Ye fights the fire a lot, it is the first time for him to participate in the flood control. "There were some of flood fighting training arranged by coach before, but he can not fully understand the tension of fighting the flood, so this experience is really unforgettable."

The first stop for Ye and his teammates to fight the flood is Shouxian County, Anhui. When they first arrive in Shouxian, heavy rain falls for days, so the water is rising up to six meters, and many houses are flooded by two-thirds of the total height. Before arriving here, Ye imagines how the flood looks like, but it is worse than he thought. With great urgency, so Ye and his teammates carry out rescue with a total of more than 14,000 sandbags and more than 1,100 piles, lay waterproof cloth of more than 200 meters, build more than 230 meters of dykes, and cope with leakage, subsidence, collapse and other dangerous situations 8 times successively. "It is hard to work 10 hours a day," said Ye, "but it is not tired at all, because we will purely want to save the people quickly when seeing these situations."

Ye saves 93 people in the rapids.

With hometown located in Chuzhou, Anhui, Ye saw the flood when he was 12 years old, "back then, I was too young to understand it. Due to the flooded farmlands, I think that we have no food. By now, I take the initiative to participate in flood control, and just know that it is like fire-fighting." During the rescue, the team should always pay attention to the changes of water flow from time to time, and four people sitting in a kayak are very difficult to stand up because of rapid flow.

After the rescue, the four-people team will sail the kayak to the rescue point, with one person left in the driving seat, one person fixing the kayak, and the other two swimming to needy people. Carrying the people to the kayak, the team eventually sail the kayak back to the shore, which Ye and teammates have done so many times a day, thus saving a total of 93 people. According to Ye, the most impressive part that touches him is that a family of four with large bags and small ones on hands, see the team and desperately shout that "save us out".

Currently, the emergency rescue mission is completed, after which Ye tells his wife and children the whole story. "I didn't tell them that, because I’m afraid that they would be worried. Surprisingly, they support me very much, and my son is particularly proud of me as a fire fighter," said Ye. When the teammates ask him about his greatest wish, Ye answers that he simply expects that the flood will recede and the displaced people will return home as soon as possible.