Almost no one knows that the largest fire station in Europe is located in Kyiv, and with it there is a fire fighting museum, which was opened in 2004, although many exhibits have been stored since the opening of the unit. There are not very many exhibits in this unique museum, but those that already exist very well show all stages of the development of fire fighting in Kyiv, and you can get acquainted with historical fire equipment not only from photographs, but also by seeing and touching real examples.
The 25th fire station in Obolon, where the museum itself is located, was built at the same time as the residential area in the late 1970s. On the territory of the fire department there are summer and winter sports complexes, where training of personnel of the entire Kyiv garrison is carried out, as well as firefighting competitions of international level.
The museum’s exhibits provide an opportunity to understand what firefighting equipment looked like over the past hundred years. Some of the exhibits have no analogues and were in service exclusively in the Kiev garrison. All cars have been restored and are fully functional. The first fire truck in Kyiv appeared in 1913 on a chassis from the first Mercedes. The car has not survived to this day and an approximate idea of what the first fire engines were like can only be obtained from photographs in the museum. The fire brigade sat on longitudinal benches with their backs to each other. There was a sliding ladder behind the firefighters’ backs, boxes with firefighting tools were located in the footboards, and a pump and a reel with a fire hose were installed in the rear part.
In the 1920s, the USSR began producing its own fire trucks based on the ZiS-5. In 1936, the first ZiS-5 ended up in the Kiev garrison. Here the driver and fire crew commander were in a glassed-in cabin, although the rest of the crew was still along the sides in the outer seats. The 1940 modification already had an expanded cabin, which accommodated the entire crew. The placement of the pump in front of the radiator grille was also original. Also in the fire fighting museum you can see a ladder truck on a GAZ-51 chassis. The staircase here reaches a length of about 17 meters, which was important during the period of mass construction of “Khrushchev” buildings and is practically useless in our multi-story times.
Where is the Firefighters Museum?
Marshal Malinovsky Street, 6
(044) 418 35 02