Fire Engines Photos

Almost every German fire service has a youth branch. Ages vary, with some starting as young as eight, but more often around twelve. The training and camaraderie is a lot like Scouts, but arguably a lot more fun! Many have marching bands as an added attraction. Switching to actual volunteer roles starts at ages between sixteen and eighteen, and - although kids are not expected or often under much pressure to join the operational roster then, quite a lot do, with college students part time in the vacations. This also happens a lot in France too.

One notable feature is that it brings many more girls into the operational volunteers’ ranks, which makes the organization much more representative of the total town population than the old fashioned beer swilling macho image of days gone by.

Anybody who doubts their abilities - and now in many countries they represent around 20% of all operational firefighting volunteers, need only know about the BA wearing seventy year old grandmother who single handedly rescued a baby and a small child from a smoke filled second floor bedroom because she was first in!

Or -another example - the young and quite petite LFB lady who was sent into the smoke filled underfloor luggage compartment of a blazing tour bus on Westminster bridge because she was the only one of a dozen firefighters small enough to get in there with a hose line…

Added by Rob Johnson on 31 December 2025.

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