Firefighting worldwide

As firefighting has a rich history throughout the world, traditions in this profession vary widely from country to country.

The Andorran Fire Brigade, with headquarters at Santa Coloma, operates from four modern fire stations, and has a staff of around 120 firefighters. The service is equipped with 24 fire service vehicles - 16 heavy appliances (fire tenders, turntable ladders, and specialist four-wheel drive vehicles), 4 light support vehicles (cars and vans), and 4 ambulances. Service is provided full-time, with five fire crews on station on a shift basis, and other firefighters available on call.

In Australia, fire services are state/territory organisations.

In several states, there are three principal fire burning organisations. One is salaried and (primarily) handles urban areas one is (primarily) volunteer and (primarily) handles rural areas and the other is government managed public land (mainly forests and plantations).

In the Australian Capital Territory:

In New South Wales:

In the Northern Territory:

In Queensland :

In South Australia

In Tasmania

In Victoria:

In Western Australia, DFES is the overarching body. The fire services consist of:

DFES funds the CFRS and VFRS vehicles, stations, equipment and training. Local government funds the others. Money for local government is sourced through the Emergency Services Levy.

The structure in Austria is similar to Germany. There are just 6 career fire services in Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Salzburg and Linz. As of 2007, some 4,527 volunteer fire departments, the back-bone of the Austrian fire service, could rely on about 320,000 men and women voluntary firefighters as active members. Fire departments exist in even the smallest Austrian villages, where they contribute to community life, usually by organizing fairs and other fund-raising activities. But also larger departments in towns from a few thousand to up to 100,000 inhabitants still largely rely on volunteers, yet some are nowadays forced to have one or more de facto career firefighters, employed by the municipality and possibly reinforced by young men who chose community service instead of the still-compulsory military service, for daily maintenance duties and to increase the availability of personnel during working hours. This is necessary, as such larger departments usually have to deal with several hundred interventions per year. In addition to volunteers and career departments, some 328 companies are required by law to run their own fire service, which may be manned by career firefighters and/or part timers who normally work on ordinary jobs in the company. This includes major airports, oil refineries, petro-chemical factories and many other businesses, even hospitals and clinics. Those departments are usually integrated in the contingency plans of the area and may therefore be called upon for reinforcing the volunteer departments outside the company grounds as well.

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