A fire alarm system wasn’t installed in the building because experts did not consider it necessary.

A new fire station in Germany that was destroyed in a fire, causing millions of euros in damage, did not have a fire alarm system.

The fire broke out early Wednesday morning at the Stadtallendorf fire station in Hesse and destroyed the equipment hall and almost a dozen emergency vehicles, according to local media.

Initial estimates put the damage at between €20 million and €24 million. No one was injured.

Local officials told the German news agency dpa that no fire alarm system was installed in the building because experts had considered it not necessary — much to the astonishment of many observers now that the station has burned down.

  • andrewta@lemmy.world
    70·
    2 months ago

    By the title I figured it just wasn’t installed yet. It turns out that no they weren’t going to have one and had no intention of installing one.

    Whoops that’s an expensive mistake.

      • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
        23·
        2 months ago

        For the life of me I can’t understand why Germans have that reputation, and I have lived in Germany for more than 10 years. Every single medium or large project (not matter of what kind) always turns into a shit show of epic proportions.

    • quafeinum@lemmy.world
      12·
      2 months ago

      That’s the baffling thing. Normally in Germany you have to have paper, permits and inspectors(and inspectors for the inspectors) before you are even allowed to think about doing something. This is nuts that someone green lit this

    • Schmuppes@lemmy.today
      18·
      2 months ago

      By the municipality, probably with substantial grants from the state of Hesse in this case. The crazy part is that the building was insured and the insurance company gave their green light after inspecting the new building. Someone’s gonna be mad over there.

  • eskimofry@lemm.ee
    71·
    2 months ago

    It’s always the same story. A group/country/institution rises to popularity for being extremely careful and well-prepared. Then people on the outside want to be let in on the action. Then the people behind this rise move on/retire/kicked out because the new people actually don’t understand patience and diligence, preparedness were the reason for the original success. They dismiss it as “red-tape” or “waste of money”, “who needs so many regulations anyway?”. They want shortcuts to success. Result: Firestation burns down.

    • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 months ago

      Gude ( local salutation from Hesse ). The state is called Hesse, the people are Hessian or Hessen. Written as I sit in a bar in Hesse.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
    5·
    2 months ago

    What an astonishing bunch of dumb fucks. Having electric vehicles and charging stations in there (which is what caused the fire), aside from things like electrical shorts, lots of computers and printers and all the random stuff firef8ghters like bringing with them to work, electrical shorts in vehicles, and things like forgetting to shut off a stove when an alarm call comes out and everyone is rushing out the door…it’s ironic, but fire stations definitely burn down. It’s not a one in a million occurance, and that station was HUGE. How dumb do you have to be to have a building and stuff stored there all worth way in excess of $20,000,000 and not spend the chump change on an alarm system?