Why Einsatzlog exists
I am a firefighter. I go on Einsätze regularly, and last year I was standing at a large-scale drill, watching our team juggle radio traffic, personnel and documentation. All of it on paper. Not ideal — but standard.
It does not matter what the scene is. A car crash or a building on fire: one of the most important things is to keep a cool head and to run an organised, clear scene. The Einsatzleitung keeps track of every vehicle, every crew, every piece of equipment. At the same time they are in contact with the Leitstelle — reporting the situation, reporting patients, requesting back-up.
Working on paper can get messy, and it gets hectic and chaotic fast, because that is exactly where you lose the overview. To prevent that — and to answer the legal questions that come afterwards — most German Dienstvorschriften require documentation at the scene.
More than 96 percent of German firefighters are volunteers. In neighbouring countries like Switzerland and Austria it is the same. Why do we keep pointing that out? Because it explains the constraints:
- municipalities fear high costs for software and hardware,
- technical understanding cannot be assumed,
- and there is legal exposure if the wrong software is used, because the law requires that subsequent changes are impossible.
So I thought: could we build something that fits every volunteer firefighter?
That is when the idea for Einsatzlog was born. I did not know yet whether it would work, but I knew I wanted to build something that volunteer firefighters could actually rely on.
Einsatzlog runs on the device, and it will be available on every platform, so that everyone — whatever hardware they happen to have — uses the same application. With Einsatzlog the Einsatzleitung documents every dispatched message and keeps track of the communication. Subsequent changes are not possible, and never will be, so the record stays lawful.
To summarise what our idea was with Einsatzlog:
- make documentation easier for everyone
- make documentation possible on every device
- keep track of critical scenes
- have an overview of all personnel
The goal is simple: build an incident log that works on every device, is legally compliant, and is simple enough that every volunteer firefighter can use it.
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