A childhood dream comes true – a ride in the HLF 20.

Like so many other people, I have always wanted to ride in a large fire engine. Now my dream has come true – I was allowed to ride in a vehicle of the Kößlarn volunteer fire department, an emergency fire fighting vehicle, HLF 20 for short.

 

This type of vehicle evolved from the pure fire-fighting group vehicles when the fire departments realized that their range of operations was increasingly shifting from fire-fighting to technical assistance and therefore equipped their fire-fighting group vehicles with additional equipment for accident assistance.

Even before they were standardized, HLFs were the most versatile pieces of firefighting equipment, used for all conceivable operational situations such as traffic accidents, hazardous goods operations and, of course, conventional fire operations. I don’t want to go into the technical details in this report; you can find a lot of information on Wikipedia.

 

Our fire engine has a very special livery. The Kößlarner Keiler, the heraldic animal of Kößlarn, accompanies the firefighters on their missions.

 

 

But now my impressions on this trip to the garage:

As a person of the 1960s, I was still driving vehicles that had just a single wing mirror and a radio-cassette player as additional equipment….

When you get into the driver’s cab of the HLF 20, you enter a huge, high-tech, electronic machine with a cockpit full of display screens, monitors, telephones, measuring devices and communication units.

I am really impressed that the firefighters manage to watch and read all the monitors when they are called out to an operation, despite the tension that every operation brings, while at the same time being able to communicate, listen to the warning tones and transport the vehicle and crew safely to the scene.

 

 

I admit it openly: I would have been hopelessly overwhelmed and would like to once again send my thanks and deep respect to all the people who work for the volunteer fire department and sacrifice their free time to help people in emergency situations.

 

By the way: after the first few impressive minutes on the ride, I became a child again and simply enjoyed the rest of the ride with a big grin on my face. Many thanks to the Kößlarn fire department for giving me permission to ride along.

And the great thing is that I get to visit the firefighters a second time and talk to someone in charge about everyday life in the volunteer fire department. I’m really looking forward to it.