A fire alarm system wasn’t installed in the building because experts did not consider it necessary.

A new fire station in Germany that was destroyed in a fire, causing millions of euros in damage, did not have a fire alarm system.

The fire broke out early Wednesday morning at the Stadtallendorf fire station in Hesse and destroyed the equipment hall and almost a dozen emergency vehicles, according to local media.

Initial estimates put the damage at between €20 million and €24 million. No one was injured.

Local officials told the German news agency dpa that no fire alarm system was installed in the building because experts had considered it not necessary — much to the astonishment of many observers now that the station has burned down.

  • JWBananas
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    25 hours ago

    Damn. Maybe I’m not as useless as I thought I was.

  • @Etterra
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    813 hours ago

    I can’t clap slowly enough to display my amazement.

  • @andrewta
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    5820 hours ago

    By the title I figured it just wasn’t installed yet. It turns out that no they weren’t going to have one and had no intention of installing one.

    Whoops that’s an expensive mistake.

    • Flying Squid
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      3620 hours ago

      Very un-German of them. It should have had redundant systems on their redundant systems.

      • @[email protected]
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        2018 hours ago

        For the life of me I can’t understand why Germans have that reputation, and I have lived in Germany for more than 10 years. Every single medium or large project (not matter of what kind) always turns into a shit show of epic proportions.

    • @quafeinum
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      1019 hours ago

      That’s the baffling thing. Normally in Germany you have to have paper, permits and inspectors(and inspectors for the inspectors) before you are even allowed to think about doing something. This is nuts that someone green lit this

  • @pageflight
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    716 hours ago

    How are fire stations funded in Germany?

    • @[email protected]
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      1014 hours ago

      By the municipality, probably with substantial grants from the state of Hesse in this case. The crazy part is that the building was insured and the insurance company gave their green light after inspecting the new building. Someone’s gonna be mad over there.

    • @apfelwoiSchoppen
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      16 hours ago

      Gude ( local salutation from Hesse ). The state is called Hesse, the people are Hessian or Hessen. Written as I sit in a bar in Hesse.

      • @[email protected]
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        15 hours ago

        Ja mit dem Nutzernamen muss ich dir den Hessen wohl abnehmen :D

        Aber Hessen als Gegend heisst doch nur auf Englisch “Hesse” und auf Deutsch “Hessen” oder verwurstle ich da was?

        Grüsse aus der Schweiz