Fire Station Burns Down
The Stadtallendorf Fire Department moved to its new fire station earlier this year. The multi-million-dollar building is a state-of-the-art facility with everything firefighting personnel could ever hope to need. Stadtallendorf is a city of roughly 21,500 residents in central Germany. It’s a thriving little burg, with successful chocolate-making and engineering businesses, among others. The department transferred its equipment and services to a brand-new fire station. Their 70 firefighters had been waiting to move for a while, too. The new fire station had been under construction for two years and by the time it was finished, it had cost the city nearly $17.5 million. According to local news reports, the new Stadtallendorf fire station boasted a huge garage, with enough space for 10 firefighting vehicles. It also had a 75-foot-tall tower for training purposes, a fully-equipped gym. That said, it was a building worth waiting for. This was an ultra-modern fire station, as fine as money can buy.
Due to some zoning and engineering loopholes in the local building code, the fire station wasn’t legally required to have fire alarms. So nobody bothered to install them. How on earth could you build a fire station without fire alarms? To begin with, this was a public building that was owned by the local government. To help them get necessary buildings up quickly, German law allows local authorities some leeway in construction requirements. In any case, these circumstances meant that the building wasn’t legally required to have any kind of fire alarm system. So, nobody installed one. Well, that didn’t work out so well, as the firefighters found themselves trying to extinguish their own headquarters.
Early on October 16, the Stadtallendorf Fire Department received a fire alarm. The firefighters hopped out of bed and rushed to the fire station… Only to realize it was the fire station that was blazing. Although the cause of the fire isn’t certain at the moment, initial investigations indicate that an overheating battery charger caught aflame in the fire station’s vehicle bay. Due to the lack of an alarm system, nobody noticed the fire until it had spread to the surrounding vehicles. Despite 170 firefighters combating the fire, the inferno destroyed each of the station’s 10 vehicles, alongside much of the station itself. Overall, the destroyed building and vehicles cost some $22-$26 million. The only silver lining is that the fire station did have protective walls so the blaze couldn’t spread to other buildings.
Firemen funnies
The first time I tried to bake a cake I followed the instructions to the letter, but it was a disaster — I almost burned the house down. The fireman told me that when it said to grease the bottom of the pan they really meant the inside of the pan.
Burglars using a welding torch to break open a say in Rich’s department store in Salem, Massachusetts, turned up the flame too high. The money inside burst into flames and resulting smoke set off the store’s fire alarm.
My grandson Tanner recently visited a fire station on the kindergarten field trip. While reviewing safety tips, the fire chief asked, “What do you do if your clothes are on fire”? Tanner replied, “Wear something else.”
Little Johnny’s preschool class went on a field trip to the fire station.
The firefighter giving the presentation held up a smoke detector and asked the class: “Does anyone know what this is?”
Little Johnny’s hand shot up and the firefighter called on him.
Little Johnny replied: “That’s how Mommy knows supper is ready!”
October 21st Birthdays
1942 – Judge Judith Sheindlin, 1988 – Hope Hicks, 1993 – Lorezia Tronco, 1989 – Bianca Suarez
1949 – Benjamin Netanyahu, 1959 – Ken Wantanabe, 1833 – Alfred Nobel, 1950 – Ronald McNair