Countywide : A Warm <i> Willkommen</i> for German Firefighters

Except for the yellow-green helmets with silver lame backing and shirt patches that say Freiwillige Feuerwehr , the 12 visiting firefighters Friday fit right in.

“Basically, we’re all firemen,” said Jurgen Stegner, fire chief of the Kaiserslautern region and Pirmasens, a city of 65,000 in southwest Germany. “The language should not be a barrier.”

Stegner joined Battalion Chief Kevin Brame of the Orange County Fire Authority in briefing the German firefighters who journeyed here for a visit Friday.

“Firefighters are firefighters. It doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re in, there’s a bond,” Brame said.

“Being a metropolitan department, we’re very advanced from a technological point of view,” he said. “The problem of fire is a worldwide problem. The exchange of stories, how things get handled, that’s what we can learn from each other.”

The Germans will split into shifts and join county firefighters and paramedics on calls next week.

“We want to see the system,” said Pirmasens firefighter Thomas Hutzler. “How (the county) fights fires and prevents fires and to meet new persons--that’s good at all times.”

One of the main differences between the jobs of the visitors and their hosts is that large German cities rely largely on volunteers, and firefighters do not perform paramedic duties.

“In Germany, sometimes we don’t need to take an ambulance,” Stegner said. “You’ve heard of our interstates--cars go 140 m.p.h. Sometimes it only takes a shovel and a broom to clean it up.”