Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
The State Emergency Services of Australian states. Basically, they're state government funded volunteer rescue agencies that focus on floods and storms. They also provide other rescue services outside of major population centres, like vertical rescue and road crash rescue. I think it's a great idea because we get enough severe storms and floods that a specialist agency is worthwhile, but there can be years between large scale events, so having the surge capacity of a volunteer agency is great.
It's a similar story with the CFA/CFS/RFS/NTFRS¹/TFS¹/whatever's happening in WA¹, but instead of rescue they do firefighting. Their main ("combat") role is fighting bushfires, which happen seasonally so surge capacity is important. However, in country areas they also provide structural and vehicle firefighting services. I'm aware that the US have a similar situation with volunteer firefighters though, so I'm not so keen to teach grandma to suck eggs.
¹These agencies are metro and rural firefighting agencies, so their combat role is all fires, not just bushfires.
Sounds similar to the German THW (Technisches Hilfswerk - engl. Federal Agency for technical relief) It's 99% (unpaid)¹ volunteers, and they assist in case heavy/specialized equipment is required. For example they build large pipelines and water reservoirs in case of wildfires to supply the firefighters, build tent cities including drinking water filtration, sanitary and kitchen facilities, as well as recovery operations after disasters².
While they mostly act locally (supporting buildings after fires, or recovering car wrecks when the firefighters don't have big enough equipment) they do have some international quick-response forces.
¹ The volunteers are insured via the state, and employers in non-critical jobs are required by law to release them in case of an alarm.
² They were initially founded as a civilian service to restore infrastructure and recover civilians during wartime, (Ziviler Bevölkerungsschutz - engl. civil protection) they thankfully haven't needed to do that job and nowadays focus on natural disasters, both national and intentional.
Don’t forget the „Freiwillige Feuerwehr“ that carries the bulk of firefighting capacity in German towns.