[cuillevel3]

> Firefighters are the most and they are almost always volunteers, the so called "Freiwillige Feuerwehr". As a member of the Freiwillige Feuerwehr you'll have some kind of pager or app to alarm you and people will then leave work and rush to the fire department and man the trucks. Only large cities (> 100k residents, I think) need to have paid firefighters.

Germany has three kinds of firefighters: volunteer, fulltime and conscripted.

I've never heard of conscripted firefighters ("Pflichtfeuerwehr"), but apparently it's possible to call upon able persons, i.e. if the village is to small and not enough volunteers exist.

[germanier]

Usually the mere announcement of such a plan is enough to find enough volunteers but there do exist a handful of such conscripted firefighter troops. Often this is necessary after a mass resignation of volunteers such as in Helsa, Hessia this year.

[accurrent]

This is actually quite similar to Singapore. Except here Conscripts make the majority with full time firefighters closely behind. There are a few volunteer firefighters, but they are a few. I myself was a conscript, it was a very valuable experience. I guess one thing holding back people from volunteering is the work culture here. Also in general firefighters aren't as well respected (which is kind of really sad).

[Akronymus]

Here in austria we have volunteer, fulltime and company firefighters. Altough wikipedia says those exist for germany too.

And apparently germany has a "Werkfeuerwehr" too, which is different too.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsfeuerwehr