Berlin Fire Brigade

The Berlin Fire Brigade is the fire and emergency medical service for Berlin, Germany. As well as firefighting, the Berlin Fire Brigade provides fire prevention, technical rescue services, emergency medical services, and assistance in case of chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear hazards.
The brigade was officially formed on February 1, 1851, by Ludwig Scabell, under the command of King Frederick William IV. Since August 2018, the Berlin Fire Brigade is under the command of its Fire Chief, State Fire Director Dr. Karsten Homrighausen. Landesbranddirektor, short LBD, translates in German to State Fire Director.
The Berlin Fire Brigade is the oldest and largest municipal fire brigade in Germany. It has a total of 4,479 staff, including 4,082 operational firefighters and officers based at 35 main fire stations. It is supported by an additional 1,537 volunteer firefighters based at 59 volunteer fire stations. Freiwillige Feuerwehr - "Free Willing Fire Defence" is the term used for Volunteer Fire Stations. The Berlin Fire Brigade has an annual budget of around €250,000,000, which includes personnel costs and investments.
In 2019, Berlin Fire Defence received 478,281 emergency calls. It is the busiest of all fire services in Germany. Approximately 83% of the alarms per year are for the emergency services, 5% for technical assistance and only 2% for firefighting.

History

Industrialization and Wilhelminian period (1851-1899)

Back in the mid-19th century, Berlin suffered a series of devastating fires. The city grew rapidly and buildings became more and more crowded. Resources could no longer keep up with the size of the buildings. Therefore, The King of Prussia decided in 1851 to command Ludwig Scabell to set up a professional fire brigade and ensure its training and equipment. Scabell created the Berlin Fire Defence with the support of the former Berlin Police Chief Carl von Hickeldey. Within a very short period, almost 1,000 men were hired and trained while the professional fire stations were built. In the same year, the world's first electrical fire alarm network was installed in Berlin. The implementation was carried out by the German company Siemens & Halske. The innovation connected the headquarters at the Molkenmarkt with 24 fire stations and all police stations within the city. In 1854 the very first newly built fire station was opened, two years later a new water supply network with 1,520 hydrants went into operation in Berlin. Scabell retired in 1875 and was succeeded by Gustav Witte. In 1879 together, with the engineer and manufacturer Greiner, they received the German patent for the world's first turntable ladder. The Berlin Fire Brigade put their first turntable ladder, built by the German company BAMAG, into service at the main fire station in 1882.

Turn of the century, First World War and Weimar Republic (1900-1932)

In 1901 the International Fire Protection Exhibition took place in Berlin to mark the 50th anniversary of the professional fire brigade. In 1906 at the fire station in Berlin-Grunewald, the first gasoline fire truck in Germany equipped with a fire pump was put into service. In 1908 Berlin purchased its first electric fire engine. During the First World War from 1914 to 1918, seven hundred officers had to transfer from the Berlin Fire Brigade to the Wehrmacht, where part of the firefighters were deployed in the newly created flamethrower regiments.

National Socialism (1933-1945)

On December 15, 1933, the term Feuerlöschpolizei was introduced for all Prussian fire brigades. The fire brigades throughout the German Reich were placed under the Ordnungspolizei, abbreviated Orpo, in 1938. These Brigades were called the Feuerschutzpolizei. The previously red fire vehicles, blue uniforms and fire service ranks were replaced by green fire vehicles, green uniforms and police ranks. They were issued firearms and batons. With few exceptions, the Nazi-led fire protection police did not intervene in the November pogroms in 1938 when the synagogues in Berlin were set on fire.

One city - two fire brigades (1946-1990)

After the Second World War, six of the 38 professional fire stations were lost. Of the 51 volunteer fire stations, three were totally destroyed while twelve were only partially. On November 21, 1948, the Berlin Fire Defence was divided into two separate authorities in East and West Berlin. The first post-war fire stations were built on both sides during the 1950s. Technology and training in East and West developed separately. In 1952 the East Berlin Fire Brigade was incorporated into the Volkspolizei, abbreviated VoPo, as "Organ F" and issued firearms and batons. East Berlin also received a "west turntable ladder" to protect the massive buildings on Stalinallee, today known as Karl-Marx-Allee. The turntable ladder type DL 52 manufactured by Metz, with a rescue height of over 50 meters, had a car that could be used as an elevator. In the days after the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the West Berlin Fire Brigade had to keep using its jumping blankets because people jumped from buildings on the demarcation line towards freedom in West Berlin. In 1969, the West Berlin Rescue Service was incorporated into the fire brigade. The Berliner Rettungsdienst was the ambulance service of Berlin. Since then, the West Berlin Fire Brigade has also been responsible for emergency medical services. In East Berlin, rescue and emergency medical services were carried out by the rescue office independently of the fire brigade until reunification. Since the early 1980s, the West Berlin fire brigade has repeatedly been involved in May riots in Berlin-Kreuzberg. A fire truck from the Berlin-Kreuzberg fire station was completely destroyed on the night of May 1, 1987.

Development since reunification

On October 3, 1990, the day of German reunification, "Organ F" the East Berlin Fire Brigade, was handed over to the West Berlin Fire Director Wolfgang Scholz. At that time, the fire brigades had a total staff of 3,788 in West Berlin and 1,112 in East Berlin. In 1992 W. Scholz retired and Albrecht Broemme was appointed as the new Fire Director of Berlin. In 1993/94, due to the high volume of urban traffic and the numerous new measures to calm the increase, new vehicle concepts were tested in the city districts. The firefighting vehicle LHF 16/12 City, short "City", was 2.2 m shorter, 20 cm narrower; and therefore, more agile than the conventional LHF 16 of the Berlin Fire Brigade. After the successful testing phase, 41 vehicles of this type were ordered from 1994 to 1997. On New Year's Eve 2000 there was a total failure of the IT control center, including the fallback level. For several hours it was not possible to place emergency calls. The vehicles were sent on patrols. There was only a marginal connection with the so-called Year 2000 problem. The affected operational control system FIS was replaced in 2000 by the more modern IGNIS and in 2017 by its successor IGNIS-Plus. In May 2006, Fire Director Albrecht Broemme became president of the Technisches Hilfswerk. The civil protection and disaster relief service of Germany. Initially, his deputy Wilfried Graefling became the temporary director and eventually the new Fire Director of Berlin in November 2006. Graefling left the Berlin Fire Brigade at the end of July 2018 and retired. His successor since August 1, 2018 is Karsten Homrighausen. In 2018, colleagues from the Berliner Fire Brigade protested in front of the Rotes Rathaus, the home to the governing mayor and the government of the Federal state of Berlin. Firefighters protested under the catchphrase "BerlinBrennt". The causes included the increasing number of operations, inadequate equipment including vehicles and materials, as well as the lack of personnel. Before the reunification of Berlin in 1990, only West Berlin had more staff than the reunited city from West and East in 2018.

Fire Chiefs

Tenure	Name	Official Title
1851–1875	Ludwig Scabell	Branddirektor
1875–1887	Gustav Witte	Branddirektor
1887–1893	Alexander Stude	Branddirektor
1893–1905	Erich Giersberg	Branddirektor
1905–1922	Maximilian Reichel	Oberbranddirektor
1922–1933	Walter Gempp	Oberbranddirektor
1933–1943	Gustav Wagner	Generalmajor
1943–1945	Walter Goldbach	Generalmajor
1945–1948	Karl Feierabend	Oberbranddirektor
1949–1957	Ludwig Wissell	Oberbranddirektor
1952–1963	Ernst Ettrich	Oberst der Feuerwehr
1957–1968	Friedrich Kaufhold	Oberbranddirektor
1963–1970	Rudi Mösch	Oberst der Feuerwehr
1968–1970	Heinz Hoene	Landesbranddirektor
1970–1990	Horst Meier	Branddirektor
1970–1988	Kurt-Werner Seidel	Landesbranddirektor
1989–1992	Wolfgang Scholz	Landesbranddirektor
1990	Manfred Schäfer	Oberbrandrat
1992–2006	Albrecht Broemme	Landesbranddirektor
2006–2018	Wilfried Gräfling	Landesbranddirektor
seit 2018	Karsten Homrighausen	Landesbranddirektor

Special Operations

September 26, 1908 - Two elevated railway trains collide at metro station Gleisdreieck - 18 dead
February 27, 1933 – Reichstag fire
May 21, 1980 - Partial collapse of the congress hall
1983 - Attack on the Maison de France
April 5, 1986 - Attack on the La Belle discotheque - three dead
16–21 December 1989 - Fire in a building with three hotel pensions on Kurfürstendamm / corner of Wielandstrasse extends to the largest hotel fire in German post-war history - eight dead
1989/90 - Video wall collapsed at the New Year's Eve party at the Brandenburg Gate
October 26, 1994 - Fire at the German Cathedral after welding work on the roof
August 4, 1998 - Heavy gas explosion in Lepsiusstrasse
July 8, 2000 - Fire in the underground station Deutsche Oper. 350 people had to be evacuated through a tunnel.
July 10, 2002 - Hurricane "Anita" - worst storm in 30 years - 7 dead and 39 injured
18 / 19 January 2007 - Hurricane "Kyrill" - a total of 1.001 alarms
December 19, 2016 – Terrorist attack on Breitscheidplatz - truck drives into the Christmas market - 12 dead and 53 injured
19/20 February 2019 - 36 hour power failure in the southeast of Berlin, evacuation of two hospitals, people from care facilities and from elevators. Maintenance of emergency care by mobile fire stations in cooperation with the police, the Red Cross and civil protection.
10/11 May 2020 - Several warehouses in Berlin-Tegel burned, the Berlin Fire Brigade was on site with over 300 emergency personnel. The fire was under control after about 19 hours, after 21 hours the last forces were able to move away.