President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday pledged to add an additional 3,000 firefighters to the nation’s disaster response system by 2028 while meeting with recipients of last year’s Phoenix Awards, which honor outstanding firefighters.
“We need to upgrade facilities at the firefighters’ training center, improve the skills of firefighters, and ensure that they have sufficient and upgraded firefighting equipment and trucks. We succeeded in adding 3,000 firefighters to the nation’s disaster response system from 2019 to 2023. Last year, we expanded the program, which aims to add another 3,000 firefighters to the system by 2028. This is expected to bolster the nation’s firefighting capacity,” Lai told the award recipients.
Lai made the announcement ahead of Firefighters’ Day on Sunday.
Photo: screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Flickr page
Lai also thanked the Phoenix Award receipts for their work and sacrifices, which helped people in Taiwan survive disasters brought by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, typhoons and fires.
One of the recipients was Central Police University fire science department professor Wu Guan-yuan (吳貫遠), who has devoted himself to firefighting education and research, as well as related administrative positions for more than 30 years, Lai said.
Aside from promoting academic exchanges on fire science and technology, Wu in 2023 translated Kyoto University honorary professor Takeyoshi Tanaka’s Building Fire Safety Engineering, so that the nation’s firefighting skills could be improved and match that of the international community, Lai said.
“Elevating whole-of-society resilience in defense is our common mission... Whether it is about dealing with the expansion of authoritarian regimes or the impact brought by climate change, or challenges from handling compound natural disasters and fires, we must make society more resilient and capable of coping with the threats and challenges,” he said.
Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the magnitude 7.3 earthquake that struck on Sept. 21, 1999, which killed 2,456 people.
Following the devastating earthquake, firefighters from around the world came to Taiwan and learned from the experience.
Taiwan now has the capabilities and experience to help other nations who experience a similar plight, Lai said.
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