Firefighters attach great importance to camaraderie, even after the end of their active service. The best proof of this is the annual reunion of former leaders and their partners from all over central franconia in the weisendorf suburb of buch. The meeting at the gasthaus sub was organized by erlangen-hochstadt's honorary district fire chief karl-heinz schalk, who was particularly pleased that the chairman of the district fire fighters association (BFV), holger heller, also took part in the annual meeting.
The BFV mittelfranken is a federation of the city and district fire brigade associations of the administrative district of mittelfranken, and holger heller was elected as the new chairman in january 2019. The city fire chief from schwabach followed dieter marx, district fire chief from the district of furth, who was retiring for reasons of age and who had also come to buch. As holger heller reported, in the district fire federation of central franconia 1103 fire departments with 39 252 active members provide their service, 3254 of them are women. The district chairman was particularly proud of the fact that 4550 young people are currently active in the fire departments and that 36 children's fire departments are starting up.
Holger heller also reported from the bavarian firefighters' association (LFV) and offered a brief outlook on future developments in fire protection and disaster management. As the chairman explained, the free state of bavaria will give the municipalities a particularly strong hand in the procurement of fire trucks and new equipment and in the construction of fire station buildings. Progress is also being made in digital radio; the integrated control center in nurnberg will be the first to use the new communication system.
At the meeting in buch, which lasted several hours, it became clear that the saying "once a firefighter, always a firefighter" is not true also applies. For many speeches revolved around a series of operations led by the present. Since they have known each other for a long time and are friends, many an anecdote made the rounds.