Fire and Rescue Service Academy celebrates round birthday

These days, the Fire and Rescue Service Academy in Bocholt is celebrating its 10th anniversary. To mark the occasion, a ceremony was held this week at the fire station on Dingdener Straße, which was also attended by many out-of-town guests.

"This school is a flagship for our city," Mayor Thomas Kerkhoff summed it up in his welcoming speech on Wednesday. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Fire and Rescue Service Academy (FRB), he had come to the fire station on Dingdener Straße together with many representatives of politics, the city and district administration as well as friendly emergency services from the entire region.

Almost 5000 rescue workers have already been trained in Bocholt, said Kerkhoff. The fact that trainees from the cities of Berlin and Hamburg had also been trained at the FRB was "a very special mark of quality", said Kerkhoff.

"Ten years of high-quality continuing education and training"

Afterwards, Elisabeth Schwenzow from the administrative board of the district of Borken also congratulated the FRB. According to Schwenzow, the FRB represents "ten years of high-quality, practice-oriented further and advanced training in the field of fire protection and rescue services". She praised the courage and innovative strength of all those involved and extended a greeting from the district administration board.

After a short keynote speech by Professor Dr. Harald Karutz on the developments in rescue service training over the past decades, there was a joint roundtable discussion in which he was joined by Berthold Penkert, Director of the Institute of Fire Services in NRW, Simon Heußen from the Fire and Rescue Service in Bochum, Thomas Deckers, Head of the Fire Service in Bocholt, and the Medical Director of the FRB Hanjo Groetschel.

The round was moderated by fire chief trainee Jannik Kölker and trainee emergency paramedic Christin Schwing. The questions revolved around the founding of the FRB, developments in rescue service training and current challenges for trainees and teaching staff.

"Something very special created"

When asked by the moderators whether the initiator of the FRB and head of the fire brigade Thomas Deckers would dare to take this step again, he answered with an unequivocal "yes". "The FRB was an important step in counteracting the shortage of skilled workers," Deckers said. "I am also proud to see how professionally our trained emergency personnel work at the scenes of operations," Deckers emphasised.

In a subsequent question and answer session, Bocholt's head of public order, Thomas Waschki, also praised the work of the FRB and emphasised the high standard of training that has been maintained there over the past ten years. "This is something very special that has been created here in recent years," Waschki said. Without the "extraordinary commitment of the fire brigade and medical management" this would not have been possible," emphasised the head of public order. "Now we have to maintain and expand this good standard."