One of the stories in Monday's STAR was that of the cesspool truck that had to be used to extinguish a fire at a service station in Manor Park.

Though on the surface, the story may seem hilarious, it really points to a bigger, much more serious issue - the lack of proper emergency systems. We can safely guess that the Fire Department was the first to be called by onlookers, but because they failed to show up within reasonable time, those on the scene had no choice but to find a way to put out the flames.

Clearly not the safest or most hygienic way to extinguish a fire, but desperate times call for desperate measures. A fire in a gas station is nothing to play around with, especially in an area where there are two service stations close to each other. If this fire were left to burn, it would have surely resulted in a huge catastrophe.

Raw sewage

By the time the fire truck finally arrived, the only thing they could do was attempt to clear the area of the raw sewage. We are sure the firemen did not enjoy this task, but we can only hope it taught them a lesson - arrive on time and you won't have to do the 'dirty work'. We really do not know what prevented them from responding to the fire as quickly as they should have, but they should strive to prevent a recurrence of something like this.

If this does not show up the fire department, then nothing does. Let's just wait to see if there will be any improvements.