Firefighting Worldwide - Austria

Austria

The structure in Austria is similar to Germany. There are just 6 career fire services in Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Salzburg and Linz. As of 2007, some 4,527 volunteer fire departments, the back-bone of the Austrian fire service, could rely on about 320,000 men and women voluntary firefighters as active members. Fire departments exist in even the smallest Austrian villages, where they contribute to community life, usually by organizing fairs and other fund-raising activities. But also larger departments in towns from a few thousand to up to 100,000 inhabitants still largely rely on volunteers, yet some are nowadays forced to have one or more de facto career firefighters, employed by the municipality and possibly reinforced by young men who chose community service instead of the still-compulsory military service, for daily maintenance duties and to increase the availability of personnel during working hours. This is necessary, as such larger departments usually have to deal with several hundred interventions per year. In addition to volunteers and career departments, some 328 companies are required by law to run their own fire service, which may be manned by career firefighters and/or part timers who normally work on ordinary jobs in the company. This includes major airports, oil refineries, petro-chemical factories and many other businesses, even hospitals and clinics. Those departments are usually integrated in the contingency plans of the area and may therefore be called upon for reinforcing the volunteer departments outside the company grounds as well.