German Fire Station Blaze Highlights Alarm Shortfall and Heavy Loss

A recently inaugurated fire station in Germany burned to the ground after a blaze began in one of its service vehicles. The facility, valued in the tens of millions of euros, had been in operation for less than a year when the disaster struck. Investigators say the fire started in a vehicle and quickly spread to the rest of the building. Experts note there was no active alarm at the station, so crews had to react without warning alarms, which slowed early containment and exposed deep vulnerabilities in the station’s fire safety system. Teams on site had to improvise without the usual automatic alerts, and that hesitation can translate into seconds turning into minutes in a blaze of this scale.