If you live in a smaller community in Germany....of the chief things that you'd notice after a couple of months is the volunteer fire department. Most will be comprised of 20 to 40 guys, who have cellphones and react when a fire is called into the central dispatch.
Most folks see the local fire department as a hobby of sorts. It used to be entirely men, and in the past couple of decades....women have started to have an interest in participation.
I should note here.....in 99.9-percent of cases....it's a volunteer organization.
So here is this story....told by our public TV folks...HR.
About two hours north of Frankfurt, there's small town....5k to 6k residents. For years and years, they had a volunteer fire department. It was upwards to around 60 folks who participated.
In the last year, they had a new volunteer. This guy was apparently very consumed with the art of fire protection, keeping up equipment, and 'auditing' fellow volunteers.
At some point, they kinda told him to lessen his enthusiasm. No one said how this was worded or how it got taken.....but he didn't like the situation. He went to court and sued the town and department.
Once in court? Well....the volunteers said 'enough' and quit. There were more or less four guys/gals left out of the 60 (probably including the guy who'd sued them in court).
Now? The mayor noted that there's a law in Hessen...if you don't have enough volunteers to man the fire department....he (the mayor) has the right to appoint NON-volunteers from the village to fill the spots. An obligation.....would be the appropriate term to use.
How the law works? Well...it's a state regulation and it basically says that anyone (male or female) between 18 and 50 can be drafted, and expect a ten-year term. I would suspect medical statements would be required, and probably out of every 100 residents of the town....at least twenty will have conditions or problems in being a volunteer.
Are they back to the same issue with the over-zealous guy who started the problems? Yes. And that's the curious thing about the future of the fire department. I might go and expect him to trigger more issues, and folks up and quit once again.
Other odds? Well....you might accidentally draft up twenty new NON-volunteers who are over-zealous on the art of fire-fighting, and keep the original guy fairly busy with being audited.
Yeah, it could get messy.
No comments:
Post a Comment