At 3.30pm on Tuesday, the alarm was raised in Mondercange after a house caught fire on Rue d’Esch. One of the first people on the scene was fire fighter Mike Dickes, who coincidentally happened to be visiting family nearby.
He told RTL he and his daughter had intended to go swimming with his sister when they heard a loud bang. The fire fighter reacted quickly, swapping flip flops for sturdy shoes, and running in the direction of the noise.
“I saw the father standing outside the front door of the house, looking up at the roof,” he said. When Mike looked up, he spotted a figure on the roof through the masses of smoke.
As the property was terraced, he was able to gain access to the neighbouring house and ran up to the top floor, where he climbed out the window and across the adjoining roof to where the boy was stuck. The child’s clothing had caught on a nail on the roof itself, so Mike quickly freed him and helped him to safety via the neighbouring property.
Mike’s quick response and his experience as a fire fighter likely saved the child’s life. The boy was taken to hospital with severe burns on his hands and other injuries.
In conversation with RTL, Mike said it was not an everyday situation for a fire fighter, and that onlookers had been overwhelmed by the situation. When he arrived at the property, he noticed a few people filming the incident with their mobile phones, but not doing anything else. “There was one man who tried to use a garden hose to put out the flames,” he remembered. “But the most important thing, the child on the roof, was somehow neglected.”
Due to his long experience as a fire fighter, Mike believes that civil-minded courage has decreased somewhat among the population. But he says everyone can do something without putting themselves at risk. “You can never do anything wrong. Helping is always better than doing nothing.”
In situations such as Tuesday’s incident, he says people who witness a fire are encouraged to alert people in neighbouring properties and ensure that cars are moved out of the way to allow the fire brigade sufficient access to the building. No one should run into a burning building themselves, and they should not endanger themselves or others, but it remains important to help people in need as much as possible.
