“Thank God, I have never been badly hurt in fire operations. But I lost my colleague and best friend to a fire,” he said.

The father of three recalled spending downtime at home playing volleyball when a fire broke out in a densely populated neighborhood of Jembatan Besi in Tambora, West Jakarta on one afternoon in December 2009.

He later received a call at 11 p.m. that day informing him that three firefighters on his squad were trapped inside a blazing semi-permanent building in a narrow alley after the roof caved in.

He went to the hospital in the middle of the night only to find that his dear friend Sulistyo Putranto had died in the line of duty. Sulistyo was only 24. Two other firefighters survived the incident.

“If I told you this story a few years ago, I would not be able to finish it as I would have broken down in tears. But it’s OK now; this is God’s will,” said Jumadi who is now stationed at the Central Jakarta Fire and Rescue Agency. 

The 2009 Jembatan Besi inferno that razed nearly 200 houses was only one incident among others in which firefighters had been injured or died across Jakarta, a large urban city that continued to face the peril of fires every year.

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