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Information board 23

The Jork Fire Brigade. Photograph taken in 1887

On the photograph we can see the town’s fire station, which has been at this location for over a hundred years. The first fire regulations for Jork were mentioned in 1656, in which it was stipulated that every house had to have a long ladder that reached to the ridge of the roof, a leather bucket, with the name of the owner or the house number on it, and a fire hook in good condition. These were the fire-fighting resources that were still used to combat fire in some of the villages up to World War I. 

If a building with a thatched roof caught fire, it could not be saved, and fire damage by sparks was particularly high. It is very easy to imagine how helpless people must have felt, faced with a fire and just this equipment. But progress came eventually, when the second-oldest voluntary fire brigade in the Altes Land was established on 29th May, 1895. 

Nowadays the local fire-brigade is made up of three sections, with a total membership of 120. Since the beginning of 2021, the fire-brigade’s equipment comprises a specialist tank extinguisher truck (a TLF 4000) that cost €370,000. This ultra-modern vehicle shows just how well-developed technology has become in the field: the first hand-operated pressure-pump in 1895 produced 250 litres of water per minute. The new TLF 4000 easily manages 3,500 litres/min. The tanks can store 4,100 litres of water and 400 litres of foam. Apart from these, they use a mobile command vehicle (an ELW1), a TLF 16-25, an LF-10-6 (fire-fighting vehicles) and an equipment and logistics vehicle. 

Information board 23

Schützenhofstraße 16

21635 Jork

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