Fire Engines Photos

The license plate is from the municipality of Aalen, a German town of 34,000 - which would have had (and still has) its own volunteer fire company, and which could easily have been the first owner of this bizarrely ugly low profile ladder. Later versions were much less peculiar looking!

Added by Rob Johnson on 04 November 2025.

This all volunteer service currently has 300 active operations staff, manning six fire stations and responding to between 550 and 600 incidents a year. The fleet includes 10 pumpers, of which 4 are rescue pumpers, 2 TTLs, 2 rescues, 3 hazmat rigs, 3 logistics trucks, 1 BA tender, 1 ICU, 6 squads and a staff car.

Added by Rob Johnson on 06 November 2025.

Never ceases to amaze the amount of kit the Germans have. Redcar with similar population and surrounded by heavy industry has two appliances, one full time one on call.

Added by CraigW on 13 November 2025.

Craig. Although it is highly likely German communities do spend more on fire protection than in the UK, a more important reason for this difference is that in towns and cities with less than around 100,000 it is rare to have any paid firefighters at all. In Britain fire services devote around 80% or even more of their budgets to payroll, benefits and pensions. Even without a bigger budget, this means German volunteers with no personnel expenses can spend five times as much on stations, appliances and other equipment.
In most countries unpaid volunteers account for between 75% and 80% of all firefighters. But in Austria and Germany it is 97%!At the extremes, England has only a handful of volunteer stations, while Scotland has a few, while Chile has no full time operational fire service employees at all. Even the capital city with over five million people is protected exclusively by volunteers.

Added by Rob Johnson on 15 November 2025.

I might add that this reliance on unpaid volunteers is quite common all over on the east coast of the United States. Nassau county on Long Island in New York State has a population of 1.4 million and is protected by no less than 190 all volunteer fire stations. The only full time staff are dispatch, communications, administrative and fire marshals. Manhasset, where I lived for several years, was protected by an all volunteer department with an average of around 240 active volunteers. Covering a coincidentally almost identical population of 43,000, it had five stations with eleven pumpers, two aerial ladder towers, two rescues, one quint, three ambulances, five chief’s cars and a utility truck. They handled around 1,200 alarms and 600 EMS runs in an average year.

Members were all very enthusiastic and included a number of FDNY staff who worked in neighboring Queens and even Manhattan but lived in the area. All volunteers were required to respond to at least 25% of all alarms, which meant that up to around sixty firefighters were usually available if all five stations were turned out. (But in the seventeen years I lived there, I don’t think this five alarm situation actually ever happened.)

When my own house had a fire, the first units were on scene in a respectable seven minutes, and quickly dealt with the fire, using a 45 mm attack line very effectively. The response included a deputy chief, a pumper from the nearest station, and both a pumper and an aerial from a second one. The fire was confined to the room where it started, and the damage was relatively slight. The saddest part of my relationship with these guys was the fact that four of them, who were also FDNY members, died in the 911 attack on the World Trade Centre, along with three of my friends and neighbors who worked there. In common with many other departments, MLFD loaned some of its fleet to FDNY afterwards to fill in some of the gaps left by the units destroyed in the attack.

Added by Rob Johnson on 17 November 2025.

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