“Dear Ladies and Gentle­men,
dear members,

2017 was a year of omens for us. Many of us perceive that the number and frequency of natural disas­ters is increas­ing. Heavy rain­fall with flood­ing, droughts with forest fires, storm events with wind break­age: it happens more often and it happens espe­cially in places where people thought they were safe from it. We are not entirely alone in this assess­ment; the major rein­sur­ers also see this trend confirmed - not only inter­na­tion­ally, but also and espe­cially in our country.

In addi­tion to a well-equipped emer­gency response team on the ground, special­ists who are prepared for the special dangers and require­ments of these events are also needed to deal with these damage situ­a­tions. Here we see @fire as a supporter of the emer­gency response author­ity in the prepa­ra­tion of oper­a­tions in the form of train­ing and advice and as a supple­ment to the exist­ing compo­nents by specialists.

There­fore, we had a lot to do in 2017: We had a team on call for the forest fires in Chile, we were present in several coun­tries during the fires in the Mediter­ranean region, we had a great “Wipfelfeuer” in Baden-Würt­tem­berg and were able to partic­i­pate in an inter­na­tional USAR exer­cise in Switzer­land. These are all small build­ing blocks on the way to an effec­tive oper­a­tional organisation.

It was also partic­u­larly impor­tant for us to obtain the “tested trans­parency” dona­tion certifi­cate from the German Dona­tions Coun­cil and to fulfil the asso­ci­ated crite­ria. This way, they can be completely sure that their dona­tion will also be used for the intended purpose and effec­tively, if they want to support our goal “Fire­fight­ers help world­wide” through dona­tions or a sustain­ing membership.