Fire protection

Fires can cause great or very great damage, even though the cause or trigger was often only a small thing. Damage by fire can occur, among other things, to people and animals, to buildings and other structural facilities, to operational facilities and equipment, to produced or stored goods, and to the environment.

Fire protection refers to all measures that prevent the development and spread of fire and smoke (preventive fire protection) and enable the rescue of people and animals and effective extinguishing work in the event of a fire (defensive fire protection).

Defensive fire protection

Preventive fire protection is primarily the task of the fire brigade and often comes into play when preventive fire protection was not sufficient or was not adhered to. Defensive fire protection includes the sub-areas of human rescue as well as fire fighting and property protection.

Preventive fire protection

Preventive fire protection is divided into the sub-areas of structural fire protection, technical fire protection and organisational fire protection.

The aim of structural fire protection is to protect people and objects in buildings from the effects of fire. For this purpose, it is necessary to limit a fire within a part of a building over a certain period of time and to prevent the fire from spreading to neighbouring parts of the building during this time. This goal is achieved, for example, by taking into account the fire behaviour of building materials, the fire resistance classes of building components, and the design of fire compartments.

All technical facilities that serve fire protection are referred to as technical fire protection measures. This includes, among other things, equipment such as fire alarm systems and other alarm systems, automatic or non-automatic extinguishing equipment such as sprinkler systems or gas extinguishing systems, hold-open systems for smoke protection and fire doors/gates as well as fire dampers, safety lighting systems or the extinguishing water supply and its provision.

Organisational fire protection, in turn, includes all operational fire protection measures and activities that help to prevent fires, i.e. prevention. It also includes all personal measures such as safety and evacuation instructions.

If you have any questions about fire protection, please contact one of the  fire protection officers.