Fire brigade deployment; charging of reimbursement of costs

Reimbursement of costs can be demanded

• for fire-fighting and technical assistance operations in which the danger or damage was caused by the operation of motor vehicles, aircraft, rail vehicles or watercraft or a trailer intended to be carried by a motor vehicle, with the exception of operations or activities that directly serve to rescue or save people and animals,
• for other operations in the technical assistance service, with the exception of operations or activities that directly serve the rescue or recovery of people and animals,
• for special extinguishing agents used and third-party services for fires in commercial and industrial operations,
• for operations caused by a deliberate or grossly negligent hazard,
• in the event of deliberate or grossly negligent false alarms by the fire brigade or false alarms triggered by a private fire alarm system or by a system for making an automatic emergency call or for the automatic transmission of an emergency message to a permanently manned centre (eCall),
• if a security service has forwarded an emergency call without verifiable evidence for the necessity of a fire brigade deployment and no action was required for the immediate rescue or recovery of people,
• for the deployment of an alarmed fire brigade to an operation for which the municipalities of the deployed fire brigades can demand reimbursement of expenses, but whose own intervention was not necessary,
• for security guards.

In principle, the person who caused the hazard or who is otherwise obliged to eliminate the hazard is liable for the costs, as well as, for example, anyone who has utilised the fire brigade's security services or who has deliberately or grossly negligently triggered a false alarm, as well as the owner of a vehicle or owner of a device that has triggered a false alarm via eCall.