Record for fire department

180 operations: From taxidermy to car accidents

The Pfarrwerfen volunteer fire department has 67 members. Last year, its operations also included the rescue of a stuffed deer.(Bild: Freiwillige Feuerwehr Pfarrwerfen)

Pfarrwerfen's fire department was deployed 180 times last year. A record that is second to none. The year 2025 begins in a similar vein.

Last year, the Pfarrwerfen volunteer fire department had to be called out no fewer than 180 times. A record for the small Pongau community (2500 inhabitants). The volunteers broke the magic number of 100 deployments on August 4. In comparison: in the record year of 2017, they were only called out a total of 88 times.

For the Pongau fire department, the busy Tauernautobahn is practically a perennial favorite. The 100th deployment was also a traffic accident involving five vehicles on the A10, which is a frequent deployment site, especially in summer. The tunnel construction site exacerbates the risk enormously.

Wasp nests and stuffed deer
"Looking back, it was a tough summer," says firefighter Stefan Hafner. "Storms, traffic accidents and then all of a sudden there was a hazardous goods incident involving chlorine gas." Even if it ended without too much trouble, the firefighters were still called upon.

The removal of wasp nests also reached a new all-time high in the past year. The Pfarrwerfen team had to respond 93 times.

There were also some curious missions last year. In August, a passer-by spotted what she thought was a dead deer in the Fritzbach stream. The fire department went out and quickly discovered that it was merely stuffed. During a car accident involving a couple on vacation in June, the fire department even took care of the injured couple's small dog.

Compared to other fire stations of a similar size, the number of call-outs is almost unbelievable. The Pongau municipality of Mühlbach, also in local class 2 out of 5, only had 29 call-outs. The district capital of St. Johann im Pongau, on the other hand, had to call out 425 times.

In any case, an eventful year came to an end for the people of Pfarrwerfen. And the new one has already begun in a similar way. In the first two weeks, the volunteers had to go out eight times.