Firefighter who soothed Hong Kong kindergarten pupils after bus crash tells how empathy helped him to ‘save hearts’ of upset infants
- Chan Yee-leung, 39, said he acted as if the children were his own daughters
- The incident was filmed after a crash at a Kwun Tong primary school on January 18 and was widely shared
Saving a fragile heart is as important as saving a life, said a veteran firefighter widely praised as warm-hearted after a video in which he calmed a group of distraught infants after a bus crash went viral online last month.
Twenty-five kindergarten pupils, aged between two and five, were in visible shock, with some wailing, after two school buses collided at lunchtime on January 18 outside Kwun Tong Government Primary School on Sau Ming Road. One student and a nanny were slightly injured.
When senior firefighter Chan Yee-leung, 39, arrived at the scene, he took off his helmet and loosened his uniform.
He then squatted down to ask a crying girl “How old are you?”, his voice cheerful. Within 10 seconds, the girl and her classmates stopped crying.
Revisiting the incident, where he had to deal with a big group of children for the first time, the father of two daughters, aged seven and eight, said he acted as if the children were his own.
“Saving someone’s heart is also of the utmost importance because a major accident would leave a psychological mark on small children,” he said.
“A senior colleague taught us to show empathy during our operations. Put yourself in the victim’s shoes and take his or her family members as your own. Besides saving lives, you should also take care of the hearts around you.”
In the widely shared video the firefighter, whose face is not visible throughout the clip but who was later confirmed to be Chan, can be seen arranging some of the kids in a line while waiting for an ambulance to take them to hospital for examinations.
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“How old are you?” Chan asks one crying girl. “Four years old? This little girl here is three. Can you help me look after her please? Let’s hold each other’s hands.”
“You kids are so brave. Everyone’s so smart!” he went on.
“This child is only two years old. She is the smallest. Can you all help take care of the little one?” he said to another. “Let’s sit and hold our hands together. No need to be scared. You kids are so smart. Let’s give yourselves a big round of applause.”
Winning praise from internet users, Chan did not take sole credit but said the job was a group effort and that all of his colleagues were “warm-hearted”.
Apart from Chan, firefighter Kelvin Lau Kin-wah also helped calm crying children at the scene.
Lau, who has served the fire department for 14 years, said it was important to take the children’s minds off their emotions and find out if they had suffered any injuries by talking to them, as some of them were not able to articulate if they were hurt.
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“One boy was crying really hard as he was being put into an ambulance. So I asked him if he knew we had a yellow ambulance as well as the regular white ones,” Lau said. “He was curious and stopped crying. He then focused on counting the ambulances by colours.”
Both Chan and Lau volunteered to visit kindergartens in their spare time to give fire safety tips to schoolchildren for a few years. They said the incident had taught them ways to better communicate with children.
So far the Fire Services Department has held 5,330 talks in kindergartens for more than 330,000 children.
“Life affects life. Our job is meaningful and can help people every day. We teach other people in our spare time and walk the walk,” Lau said.
