BS-R-4: Active emergency relief responders in civic protection | Umweltbundesamt

BS-R-4: Active emergency relief responders in civic protection

The number of emergency relief responders declined between 2000 and 2014, above all owing to a decline in the number of members of fire brigades. Since then the commitment has grown again. In 2021 there were in total some 1.15 million more individuals active in fire brigades and THW – 50,000 more than just five years before. Adverse circumstances such as the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic did not lead to a marked decline in membership numbers.

More active participants again in civic protection

As far as civic protection in Germany is concerned, volunteers are our core strength: Around 1.7 million voluntary helpers get involved in various emergency relief organisations. Around 98 % of THW members are working on a voluntary basis. Around 94 % of active members of fire brigades in Germany are organised in volunteer fire brigades. Consequently, those responsible for civic protection have emphasised time and again that without the willingness of members of the public to become voluntary helpers in the relevant organisations, the capacity of units to carry out their tasks will be seriously jeopardized.

Also with regard to climate change, the minimum requirement for the further development of civic protection is a stable resource of full-time and voluntary emergency relief responders. This is not just because the expected changes of climatic framework conditions are may require more frequent and more extensive operations resulting in greater stress levels, but also because the availability of responders may be restricted if they are themselves affected by the disaster, for instance by damage to private premises or due to health problems resulting from heatwaves.

Looking at the development of the past two decades, it is clear that up until 2014 there has been a significant decline in the number of active members of fire brigades and of the THW. During that period, their number decreased by approximately 70,000 from 1.17 million to 1.1 million active members. Subsequently, the development was reversed: Up until 2020 the number of active members of fire brigades and THW increased again. In other words, currently there are more than 1.15 million active members. Another decline did not occur until the last year of the current timeline. From 2020 until 2021 the membership numbers of fire brigades and THW declined by just under 600 individuals. As a result of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic the organisations involved in civic protection themselves suffered limited service capacity. The aggravated working conditions imposed a severe test of endurance on emergency responders. Nevertheless, the reduction in numbers of active voluntary emergency relief responders remained manageable. There are also lateral entrants among the new recruits joining in 2020: the very adversity of the pandemic prompted them to become active in assisting others.

Given that the membership numbers of fire brigades are four times as high as those of the THW, they play a much stronger role in characterising the progress of the time series. The declining trend up to the mid-2010s is due primarily to a negative development in volunteer fire brigades. While professional fire brigades as well as factory or company fire crews were able to boast increasing or at least stable membership figures, volunteer fire brigades had approximately 70,000 fewer volunteers than just 15 years previously. One of the factors that led to a tailing-off in the recruitment of volunteers was the suspension of compulsory military service starting in 2011. This affected in particular the age group of 20 to 25 year olds.

For the TWH, the mean of the years 2000 to 2014 amounted to some 41,000 active volunteers. In 2015 the number increased to 66,000 and remained at that level in 2016 and 2017. Up to 2021, the number of active THW volunteers rose to just under 79,000. In order to safeguard a viable number of emergency relief responders, the THW requires around 5,200 new helpers annually. It has not proved possible to reach this target figure in the past few years. The THW gained on average approximately 4,000 new members per year, while additional demand exists above all in local associations in rural regions. Up until 2011, the THW managed to recruit annually around 2,500 individuals owing to the suspension of compulsory military service.

In recent years it was possible to increase the proportion of female volunteers in organisations which are predominantly technically oriented: In 2000 the proportion of female members of fire brigades amounted to 5.7 %, while by 2021 the proportion of female members had risen to 10.5 %. As a result, there are nowadays 44,000 more women active in fire brigades than in 2000. Especially among youth fire brigades many female volunteers become actively involved. In the period from 2000 to 2021 the proportion of females rose from 22 % to more than 28 %. In the THW the number of female volunteers has increased steadily since 1999 by almost 8,000. Compared to a proportion of scarcely 4 % in 1999, this value amounted to approximately 12 % in 2021.

The demographic change is reflected in the many years of declining membership numbers up to the mid-2010s, but also in the number of voluntary helpers rising only gradually. Changes in the age pyramid have led to shrinkages in the pool of potential emergency responders to the same extent as the increasing concentration of people living in towns and cities. Recruitment bottlenecks can occur especially in sparsely populated rural areas with a comparatively older population despite their greater willingness to make a commitment to civic engagement compared to inhabitants of towns and cities. In this respect, various studies take a very critical view of the future, raising the question in what way the existing structures are to be taken forward in order to ensure their reliable functioning in the future. In order to ensure that the number of voluntary helpers will continue to rise in future, the organisations active in the field of civic protection intend to make greater efforts, for instance, to involve people with a migration background or even senior citizens as helpers in accordance with their level of individual capacity. There are campaigns at Federal level in support of these endeavours, such as the BBK’s campaign launched in 2021 for recruiting volunteers translated as ‘No matter what you can do – you can help’ and the accompanying establishment and operation of a web-based platform which is named ‘mit-dir-fuer-uns-alle.de’.

Furthermore, social and technical developments also open up new avenues. For example, during the flood events in 2013, 2016 and during the devastating flood disaster in the Ahr valley in mid-2021, emergency relief was organised fast and unbureaucratically via social networks in many of the areas affected. This seems to indicate that it might be possible for civic protection to become even more effective in utilising the existing willingness of individuals to get involved and provide assistance, even if the way this is done relies less on fixed structures than in former times. Work is ongoing with the objective to develop appropriate concepts for a structured integration, coordination and training of spontaneous volunteers: this work is taking place in BBK’s close cooperation with the emergency relief organisations and the Länder.