Civil defense - Firefighting units in Lower Saxony feel prepared for emergencies.
In Lower Saxony, fire departments believe that they've got the necessary resources to tackle big-scale incidents caused by floods or forest and vegetation fires. According to Olaf Kapke, the President of the Lower Saxony State Fire Service Association, the state and its municipalities have made substantial improvements in their equipment ever since the devastating floods that hit the Harz Mountains in 2017.
This resulted in a 40 million euro package being launched by the state to modernize the help services, with fire departments receiving extra funds to combat vegetation and forest fires. Lower Saxony was the pioneer in Europe when they acquired two fire-fighting planes, which will be based at the Braunschweig-Wolfsburg Airport this year. Apart from that, other equipment like waterproof and all-terrain emergency vehicles have been procured, with 17 already handed over to the fire departments and another 13 in the pipeline. Kapke's words, "We're making significant strides in this department."
Kapke also highlighted two innovative changes: The Lower Saxony Fire Protection Act is being revised, and fire departments have had a clear input. This will help achieve a high level of acceptance from the public. Moreover, training has undergone substantial modernization. Now, instead of requiring 80 hours of training for career-changers to be on deployment, they only need to go through 13 modules for operational readiness.
Fire departments across Germany are seeing an increase in new recruits, stated Kapke. "We're experiencing massive growth in our children's and youth fire departments, guaranteeing future fire protection." He further shared that there are roughly 52,000 children and young people involved in fire departments, with around 135,000 volunteers and women. Including professional and plant fire departments, Lower Saxony has approximately 142,000 men and women working in the fire service.
Kapke emphasized the fire departments' readiness to deal with severe situations, presented by the so-called Christmas floods that occurred towards the end of 2023/24: "Our firefighters managed to handle this situation over such a long period due to the large number of our people," he commented.
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Source: www.stern.de
