Ing. Arnošt Karas

“Another encounter with death was in connection with firefighting. In 1944, there was an air raid on Allied aircraft in Ostrava in August. The bombs went down the track. It started at the National Moravian-Silesian Theater, but at that time it was called differently because it was acted only in German. It started there and ended in Slezská Ostrava on the hill in Hladnov. During the Protectorate we had a wooden house for our congregation at our disposal, so that we had a place to dress. So we were in that house. And now the wave came. That was horrifying. One of us did not believe the house and ran away to hide elsewhere. His pressure wave caught up with him and he died. So it was the first encounter with death. It was enough for any of us to come out of the wooden hut. The lodge then collapsed, but all of us, who were there, actually survived at last.”

“That armory stands there until today. There were a number of vehicles labeled 8, 16 and 24 depending on how much water they gave per minute. Sixteen and twenty-four had their tank, which contained about four hundred litres of water, and already had a foamer. So it happened, when the roof of the house in Kunčičky was on fire that we had arrived, but the vehicle 16 sank and became immobile. There was no way to get to the water. We silly firefighters did not know that we had four hundred litres of water and a foamer to really be able to save the house. It was our big mistake. We didn't know the possibilities yet, because by then we had been driving with open cars without water supplies, and we were relying on a water source, whether natural or not.”