Dear members, friends and supporters,
2019 was the second year in a row in which a dry period confronted fire brigades at home and abroad with a particularly large number of particularly fierce vegetation fires. As in the previous year
we found that our almost 20 years of expertise, especially in vegetation firefighting training, was in demand. We are very pleased that we can provide support here, but I would also like to make it clear that nationwide training for public fire brigades cannot and must not actually be our task. Especially when the demand for fire brigade training exceeds our capacities in terms of time and personnel. This is where government agencies are needed. Fortunately, there are also clear signs of improvement in this direction.
In our view, the lack of tactical foundations in forest firefighting is also a cause for concern. The technology is available and training in this area is also increasing - but a fundamental definition, testing and establishment of operational tactical principles would have to precede this. To meet this pent-up demand, we held a workshop in October with numerous experts from Germany and abroad. The frightening conclusion was: we often don’t know what we don’t know!
Here I see it as @fire’s special task to uncover this missing knowledge, evaluate it with regard to the tactical environment in Germany and then pass on the new findings. We invite all those who are interested in improving the performance of the fire brigades and thus also the safety of the emergency services to participate in this process.
The second area of @fire, rescue operations after earthquakes and natural disasters, was also very active in 2019. In preparation for the IEC certification of the United Nations, we conducted on a
training area near Paris successfully carried out a 24-hour full-scale exercise. There were clear synergy effects in terms of experience abroad, leadership, logistics and communication, which makes our work under the motto “firefighters help worldwide” much more effective, even if tactics and technology are fundamentally different in our areas of “forest fire” and “earthquake”.
Jan Südmersen
Chairman