Quiet days between the years: The employees of the central control center in Wetterau can only dream of that.

After all, the phone rings every ten minutes, quite often more often.

Because people from the district area regularly call for help - because injured people have to be treated after a traffic accident, a candle has caused a fire in a room or a relative who suspects a heart attack needs medical help quickly.

And with an increasing trend.

Thorsten Winter

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for central Hesse and the Wetterau.

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The employees of the control center, which has been based at Steinkaute in Friedberg since the summer, had to call for an ambulance 140 times on Christmas Eve alone.

In retrospect, shift manager Jens Kraft speaks of an inconspicuous Christmas night in a positive sense.

From Christmas Day to New Year's Eve, 989 more missions of this type were added, as a spokeswoman for the district announced on request.

In addition, the fire brigade had to be deployed in 22 cases.

Otherwise, two dozen unspecified assistance and other missions have been recorded.

All in all, rescue services and fire brigades had to be called out 57,646 times last year.

In the previous year, which was particularly affected by Corona, 62,000 calls were received via the number 112.

Emergency calls can be answered within ten seconds

18 rescue stations and 26 ambulances are distributed across the Wetterau.

140 paramedics and paramedics as well as 100 emergency doctors and 120 paramedics are available for people in need.

The district associations of Friedberg and Büdingen of the German Red Cross, the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe, the Malteser Hilfsdienst and the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund carry the rescue service.

Head of control center Matthias Nickel speaks of another year of crisis with a view to 2022.

"Corona and significant absences from illness, including in the emergency services, have presented us with major challenges," he is quoted as saying by the district.

Compared to the last year before the pandemic, the control center counted a quarter more operations.

This is also due to bottlenecks in the medical on-call service.

There are clear guidelines for the approximately two dozen employees in the control center with regard to calls: an emergency call should be answered within ten seconds.

The dispatchers then have a further 60 seconds to send the rescue service, the fire brigade or the civil protection to the respective location, as required.

Working in the control center requires a lot of experience.

The employees are paramedics, they have also completed a course at the state's fire service school.

As boss Matthias Nickel says, the search for new colleagues is becoming increasingly difficult.

The helpers also felt the shortage of skilled workers.