International Fire Service - Contacts and Cooperations

International Fire Service - Germany, Europe and the World

The International Fire and Emergency Service -
Fire- and Rescue Concepts of the new EU Member States

The world becomes smaller - according to feeling at least when a trip into the deserts of Arizona or to the sun beaches of Florida barely seems more longer than a journey from southern "Lake Constance" (Bodensee) into the "Lüneburger Heide". The similar counts nowadays to the east of Europe. The membership of numerous more new states in the European Union (EU) lets before "infinitely far away" appearing landscapes and towns seem suddenly close and "experienceable".

Borders are hardly put to new experiences, acquaintances and cooperations.

Also and just in the fire service area new possibilities of the cooperation present themselves. If it were often private or at federation level organized initiatives for the last decades away, which made contacts with fire departments and firefighters of foreign states in the east and west, across the "big lake" or into other far away lands possible, new political circumstances and a much more open thinking since some years demand approaches, contacts and cooperations between the fire departments as well as the emergency and rescue services on this and the others side of the borders.

It's a fact that international work and cooperation in spite of a lot of progress is not always also easy in the own land, however, prove some "strange occurences", which we had to "accept" in our work in the past and which we must "accept" also even today.

• Thus, for instance, the editorial staff of a German professional magazine allowed to let know that contributions about the fire service in foreign states "would not interesting anyone" -,
• A work group of the "Comité Technique International de Prévention et d'Extinction du Feu" (CTIF), which called itself as the "International Fire Federation", did'nt accept for instance to take up the German representative of an American fire magazine as a member -,
• and not least an international project planning to represent the fire and rescue concepts of the new EU member states failed because of the evident inability of representatives and EU bureaucrats, whom did not succeed even after months in finding the contacts responsible for it at the European Union (EU) in Brussels.

Isolated examples - maybe? Anyway we cannot be discouraged within the scope of our international activity by such "strange occurences". There are enough means and ways to take up, to practise and to maintain international contacts with fire departments and rescue services abroad also without "support" of certain official associations, of their representatives and of politicians. The present success agrees with us certainly.

The world becomes - even what concerns the distances and holiday seasons - smaller, greater, however, concerning the new possibilities for informations, establishment of contact and cooperation - and now this counts increasingly also to the big and wide world of the fire services.

For many years the "FirePublications/Feuerwehrpresse" as well as Wolfgang Jendsch personally uses the upcoming possibilities above all on a professional level to maintain and to save contacts with fire departments and rescue services, to associations and organizations in wide parts of Europe and the world.

Meanwhile the international fire and emergency service as well as the subject areas "Fire and Rescue Concepts of the new EU Member States" and "International Forest and Wildland Fire Fighting" have become for us for a long time main focuses of our activity.

Further Informations about the international foreign Activities

The following listing indicates exemplarily the extensive and most essential part of the of the foreign activities in cooperation with fire departments, rescue services, fire and rescue agencies as well as with the suitable authorities (Ministries of the Interior, communities).

The list is not entire and refers to further subjects-related information, publications and special pages of the "FirePublications/Feuerwehrpresse Wolfgang Jendsch". Beside the contacts with fire departments and rescue services in the European and non-European foreign country other contacts and cooperations exist naturally to numerous fire departments as well as to emergency and rescue services in Germany.

These national and international activities represents in special way the high competence of the "FirePublications/Feuerwehrpresse" as well as from Wolfgang Jendsch personally concerning the international fire and emergency service.

General Functions with international Activities in the Fire- and Rescue Service

• Public Relations Officer (PIO) of the "Internationalen Bodensee-Feuerwehrbundes" (BFB) with about 120 member fire departments arround the "Bodensee" (Lake Constance) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (up to 2003).
• Member of the Scientific Professional Advisory Board of the "Ärztekammer Baden-Württemberg" (Medical Association) for the planning and preparation of the international fire and emergency congresses and exhibitions for interdisciplinary cooperations in fire and rescue service and danger defence "RESCUE" in Stuttgart/Germany.
• Special Editor and Author of the book edition "BRAND - Die Feuerwehren (und Rettungsdienste) der Welt" (Fire and Rescue Services of the World), Weltrundschau Baar/Schweiz (publishing house) since 1992. Since then a total of ten high-quality professional books were written into French and German language about the fire and rescue services being all over the world.
  
• Author of special books about the international fire service (see also - partly in English: Fachbücher).
• Author of special books about the international fire apparatus technique (see also: Fachbücher).
• News Editor for the special magazine "Wildfire" of the "International Association of Wildland Fire" (IAWF), South Carolina/USA (up to 2004)
• Member of the "International Association of Wildland Fire" (IAWF), South Carolina/USA
• Member of the "International Organization of Fire Photography" (IOFP), California/USA
• Member of the "California Fire Photographers Association" (CFPA), California/USA