Fire stations. They should actually be the safest places when it comes to protection from fire – not only are they crowded by lots of professionals, they also have all the equipment ready at hand. But look what happened today in the little town of Kandern, South Germany …

Kandern, shortly after 12 pm:
The sirens in town go off. I’m not paying much attention, since it’s common practice in Germany that every Saturday at 12 o’clock the sirens go off just to check their functionality. Except that today isn’t Saturday …

Five minutes later:
Someone from the upper floors of our building is yelling down to us that they can see smoke rising a couple of blocks down. Fire?

Five minutes later:
We have dinner plans for an Italian restaurant in town. We set out, but only two minutes after leaving, we’re approaching this scene:

Smoke is wafting shortly ahead of us. We walk faster, and quickly approach the town’s fire station. That’s when it dawns on us:

The fire station, which is directly on our way to the restaurant is on fire. No one has thought about closing the road from where we’re approaching, so we can get right to the center of the action:

Note the equipment with which the firefighters try to go against the fire: shorts and flip flops – this is firefighting in the summer!