Each airport needs a big fire station for the case of emergency. Fire stations on airports are usually very well equipped, because if an airplane has to make an emergency or crash landing, it's possible that hundreds of thousands of litres of kerosene start burning.
The firefighters need to be ready 24 hours 7 days a week. The regulations say that in case of an emergency, they have only 45 seconds to be outside the building with all the equipment ready, and they have to reach any part of the airport in 3 minutes (those 45 seconds are counted into the 3 minutes). This is why they use the firemen's pole to move from the 1st floor to the room with the fire engines, as you can see on the next picture and video.
This is also the reason why there are two fire stations in Ruzyně on strategic locations. And in order to speed things up even more, they have their protective cloting and shoes packed in a way that they can just jump into them and be going.
Trivia: If someone has an idea what the white spool in the back of the truck on the first picture is, let me know. It looks like a really huge spool of toiler paper, but somehow I doubt this is what it's used for!
The fire station on the Ruzyně airport is the most modern fire station in the Czech Republic. Because the needs of each airport can be very different, most of the fire engines used on airports are custom built for the particular airport. The fire engine on the next set of pictures is capable of spraying 6,000 litres every minute (that's 100 litres every second). It can hold water for up to three minutes of operation plus a lot of the anti-fire foam that can prevent a surface from starting to burn.
Not all fire engines on the airport are huge. Some are... well I don't want to use the word small, but let me stay standard size.
The fireworkers use different types of trucks as well. They have an ambulance on wheels and for some reason a van of the customs office is also parking in the fire station.
Car engines of course use fuel and generate a lot of deadly exhaust gases. But what to do in order to keep the fireworkers alive when they have to start all the engines and run out of the station when an emergency starts? The solution is a vehicle exhaust extraction system that will keep the air ventilating. You can see such a system - the hoses and the control buttons - on the next set of pictures.
When we talked to the fireworkers, they told us that the last big emergency was in 1982 (yes, that's 25 years ago). The fireworkers spend most of their time training; they have physical and proficiency exams four times a year. The most common task they do when someone calls them is dealing with fuel leaking from airplanes and fuel tanks. Before entering the fire station, the tour guide told us that in case of emergency we should stay on the green areas of the ground in order not to obstruct the trucks, but there was no emergency during our visit.
However, this was just a calm before the storm. Two days after our visit, in the evening hours of 23rd October 2007, a British Airways Flight 857 bound for London Heathrow had a problem with the hydraulics system in their landing gear shortly after departing Prague at 18:55. The pilots were forced to make an emergency landing in Prague. All the fireworkers rushed to the runway, dozens of ambulance cars moved to the airport. The airplane landed safely at around 20:00. Noone was injured; the pilots, air traffic control, and all emergency personnel did an awesome job. A job that they are trained for and a job that I thank them for doing so well.
Air travel is the safest form of travel, perhaps with the exception of maglev trains (but as far as I know, there is only one commercial installation of such a train in the whole world to this date). When you're flying again, rest assured that all the people responsible for getting you to the destination airport are doing their best - and there are a lot of them and they are highly-skilled professionals.
And if you don't believe that we were really on a tour on the airport, check the following photos. The first picture shows me (Michal - can't mistake me for someone else when you check the sign on my T-shirt), the next two pictures show Peter on a ladder fire truck and in a cabin of the huge fire engine, the next picture shows Karel (my boss) in the same cabin, and the last picture shows Peter and Karel discussing whether they should start the water, or to use the radio to call someone. I did not find any picture of Jiří unfortunately, he must have been hiding all the time!
We really enjoyed the tour and we will undoubtedly be coming back. I hope you like the pictures and the videos!
Copyright notice: Text and images copyright by Michal Řeháček.