Dear members, friends and supporters,

There is a lot of talk about disas­ter manage­ment these days. This is demanded and improved all over the world.

@fire was also deployed in 2020 for the explo­sion disas­ter in Beirut, but also to support the fire brigades at a major forest fire in Gummersbach.

The role of @fire in the national and inter­na­tional disas­ter manage­ment struc­ture is not yet fully defined. Forest fire­fight­ing and USAR are declared to be our main fields of action. Here, in 2020, we were able to take big steps in build­ing our capa­bil­i­ties with the prepa­ra­tion for our USAR team certi­fi­ca­tion, which was unfor­tu­nately post­poned, as well as an inter­na­tional work­shop on aerial forest firefighting.

The current disas­ters in 2021 have shown how impor­tant these steps were - and that further steps must follow.

Of course, @fire does not have the clout of the Federal Agency THW or munic­i­pal fire brigades. But it is precisely our flex­i­bil­ity and adapt­abil­ity that, in our view, comple­ment the big play­ers in disas­ter manage­ment very well. Here, a close analy­sis of capa­bil­ity gaps, combined with the high commit­ment and excel­lent organ­i­sa­tional skills of our members, has devel­oped the NGO @fire into a think tank in many areas.

And if the concepts are right, the clout will surely follow.

For the latter, we still need support in the form of new members and finan­cial support - so that “Fire­fight­ers Help­ing People World­wide” becomes an effec­tive response to the coming threats and challenges.

Jan Südmersen