56 lifesavers have saved both small children and their parents over the past year
On September 17, the Minister of the Interior Lauri Läänemets and the Director General of the Rescue Board Margo Klaos recognized 125 outstanding people who have saved lives in difficult circumstances over the past year, attracted attention with special care and bravery, making a significant contribution to the field of rescue with their actions.
One of the youngest to be rescued was a 2-year-old child. One evening around ten o'clock, a smoke and carbon monoxide detector (Nublu) from Valga sent out a fire alarm, which was responded to by a patrol. “I ran to the door of the apartment on the fifth floor and kept hearing the alarm signal from the detector. The apartment door was unlocked and I was able to open it. I saw a cloud of smoke, the whole apartment was full of smoke. I quickly looked around in the apartment and found a man and a 2-year- old child sleeping in one of the rooms. I got the man up by shaking him hard, we took the child too and I sent them out. I entered the apartment again on my own and found a pot of food burning on the stove. I shut off the stove and lifted the pot into the sink,” Veiko Vaiksoo, the security officer from the patrol of G4S responding to the incident, explained what had happened. Since the father and child had been sleeping in the smoke, they were taken to the hospital for observation.
In one late evening of January 2024, G4S Estonian patrol security personnel Vyacheslav Shtscherbakov and Marek Kuznetsov saved a person from a smoke-filled private house in Tartu. The security personnel who responded to the alarm of the detector felt the smell of smoke when they arrived at the private house and already saw outside through the window that something was burning in the building. Marek and Vyacheslav found a person sleeping in a bed in the smoke-filled house. They carried the victim out of the building and transferred him to the ambulance.
A total of 56 people received the lifesaver medal. In addition to lifesaver medals, four Rescue Service Silver Crosses, 17 Rescue Service Medals and 48 Rescue Board Mission Medals were awarded.