© dpa
In 2022, for the first time in its history, the Berlin Fire Department responded to more than half a million calls for emergencies, illnesses and fires.
In 2022, there were 528,895 of such calls in total - an increase of 7.5 percent or about 35,000 missions more than in 2021. "That means one mission every minute," said Berlin's Senator for the Interior Iris Spranger (SPD) at the presentation of the annual statistics. 90 percent of deployments were trips with ambulances and rescue vehicles. Only 9578 of the missions were for fires, which was still 40 percent more than in the previous year.
For many years, especially the ambulances and paramedics of the fire department have been deployed more and more often, pushing the organization to its limits. Reasons for this are the aging society resulting in more sick people, but also unnecessary calls to the emergency number 112 for minor injuries or illnesses. Spranger appealed, "Keep the emergency number free for real emergency calls."