Shanghai's government has this month established the city's first dedicated firefighting team, according to the Global Times. Initially, the team will be composed of 12 professional firemen with regular permanent positions in the city's payroll.
Prior to the creation of a regular unit of career firefighters, Shanghai's fire department was mostly manned by soldiers on detail from the military. These soldiers are on loan usually for a period of just two years, not enough time to sufficiently get the training and experience to react adequately in cases of actual emergencies. Within their two-year period of detail, unless they get a promotion as fire sergeant, they will usually be facing summary retirement once they get back to their regular units in the army.
This staffing arrangement between the army and the city government has been proven time and again ineffective and risky. Just last May, two young private first-class ranked personnel, Qian Lingyun and Liu Jie, fell to their deaths from the13th floor balcony of a downtown apartment in a residential block in Shanghai. The two casualties joined the city's fire service in Dec. 2012. So far, four young firemen have already died on the job in 2014 alone.
In most cities in other developed countries, their fire departments or fire bureaus are staffed with regularly hired career firefighters. A professional firefighter, aside from firefighting and fire rescue, is also trained to provide fire prevention services, including visiting homes and offices to check for fire safety, give advice and even fit smoke detectors and alarms if asked.
Shanghai, the largest Chinese city in terms of population, not only does not have regular professional firefighters until this month; it also just does not have enough firefighters.
According to the Global Times, Shanghai is 16,000 short of firefighters when seen against the generally accepted standard of 10 firemen for every 10,000 residents.
Of course, Shanghai's fire brigade, with its personnel complement of mostly borrowed 7,000 young soldiers, is still the largest fire department in Asia. Regularizing even a fraction of that staff would really eat a sizable chunk out of the city's budget.
Notwithstanding the manpower shortage, Shanghai boasts of having the most advanced fire training center in Asia, according to Haagen, the global company that installed and equipped the city's firefighting training facility.