Lack of housing costs helpers

Created: 01/16/2023 07:02

By: Michael Stuerzer

New and veteran members of the Percha Volunteer Fire Department: second commander Patrick Lang, new member Tanja Brabetz, Markus Helldörfer (honored), board member Thomas Fersch, new member Sebastian Marquard, Johannes Fersch (honored), new member Benjamin Berger, Leonhard Fersch (honored), new member Emanuel Preiß and Commander Florian Brabetz (from left).

© Andrea Jaksch

The Percha volunteer fire brigade is suffering massively from the lack of affordable housing.

Last year she lost several emergency workers because of this, but was also able to gain new ones.

Percha

– One lives in Schongau, another in Aschering: The Percha volunteer fire brigade also lost active members last year because they could not find a suitable apartment in Percha.

Board member Thomas Fersch drew attention to this at the annual general meeting on Friday evening - also in terms of politics, which was represented by Mayor Patrick Janik, third mayor Christiane Falk and several city councillors.

But the Perchaers also managed to gain new members and stabilize the number of active members at 20 – also through television.

Although Percha is one of the larger districts of the city, the fire service has had acute personnel problems in recent years - there was even talk of converting it into a fire-fighting group.

This was not discussed at the meeting.

The issue could come up again when the city council will consider the fire service demand plan.

Fersch and Commander Florian Brabetz do everything they can to attract new members.

That works too, there were four last year, and two other sponsoring members.

In one case, television helped: The Perchaer activists were interviewed by the magazine "quer" on volunteering issues, passers-by were also questioned - and one stayed the same and moved out.

The commander's wife is now also a member of the military.

What helps is that the number of missions has dropped to 33, as reported by Florian Brabetz;

these included six fire operations, seven times technical assistance, 16 fire alarm systems - the latter now account for half of all operations at many fire services in the city area, and as a rule there are false alarms.

In 2021, the military deployed 53 more times.

The Percha fire department has also reduced the burden of operations by handing over the district's own command vehicle to the Oberpfaffenhofen fire brigade.

In addition, there are 13 exercises in the commander's report, a total of 582 hours.

The club work got going again after the Corona break.

Fersch looked back on a number of appointments, including church appointments, two comrade weddings, a fatherhood, visits to other fire services and attending the funeral of the long-time commander of the partner fire service in Percha/South Tyrol.

He thanked the people of Percha for the donations to the military.

This year the volunteers were able to collect Christmas trees and donations again, around 60 trees.

Since the previous treasurer had resigned for personal reasons, Lucas Pint was unanimously elected as his successor.

There were also honors, some later: Markus Helldörfer (who has since moved away), Johannes and Leonhard Fersch were honored for ten years of service, the longstanding commander Thomas Lang for 25, Jürgen Römmler for 40 and Uli Brabetz for 50 years.