Water on a donkey cart: how Kuwait’s fire service grew into its own directorate

Before Kuwait had a fire engine, a fire was the neighbours’ problem. People ran to help, and water arrived in tanks pulled by donkeys, mules and horses. That is how the Kuwait News Agency describes the 1940s, and how Lieutenant Colonel Dr Khaled Khudair Dahal, a serving fire officer, describes them in his book “Firefighting in Kuwait Between Past and Present”, which traces the idea of a fire team back to before 1946, when the Municipality was founded.

Four trucks and thirty men

In 1950 the fire team received four new water-carrying trucks, and its strength reached 30 men, according to Colonel Jassim Al-Mansouri, then deputy director general for firefighting, speaking to KUNA in 2000. The Municipality’s fire team was later merged with the Public Works team. One station opened in the Public Works garage as Centre No. 2, and another in Shuwaikh as Centre No. 3, equipped with a full fire engine, a tanker and 16 men.

From numbers to neighbourhoods

In 1962 the service moved from Public Works to the Kuwait Municipality. The Municipality’s president at the time, Sheikh Fahad Al-Salem Al-Sabah, ordered that stations be named after the areas they stood in rather than numbered, so a station became known by its district.

Ali “Hreija”

Dahal’s book gives much space to Ali Abdulrazzaq Al-Saleh, known as “Ali Hreija”, who ran the fire service from 1955 to 1977. The book credits him with founding the general directorate in 1952 and with sending students abroad to qualify as officers. KUNA’s account adds that secondary-school graduates were sent to the United Kingdom to learn the basics of fire science and come back as officers.

At sea as well

The wooden boats Kuwaitis relied on for fishing and trade burned as easily as houses, so a marine firefighting unit was formed. Its first boat, the book says, was a wooden craft named “Muslim”.

The 1982 law

In 1982 the fire service became an independent general directorate, governed by its own Law No. 36 of 1982. By 2000 it ran 33 stations spread across the governorates, plus a separate marine fire zone. Dahal’s book, published in 2022, follows the founding of 53 stations one by one.

Photo: A wooden hand-pump fire cart from the early 1800s at the Old Colony History Museum in Taunton, Massachusetts. It is illustrative and not from Kuwait. By Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons, edited by Kuwait One.

Source: KUNA, “The General Fire Directorate, a national symbol in Kuwait”, 12 February 2000 (kuna.net.kw, item 1059653), and Al-Anba’s review of Dr Khaled Khudair Dahal’s book “Firefighting in Kuwait Between Past and Present”, 18 March 2022 (alanba.com.kw/1107968). Both read on 15 October 2026.