When you’re a volunteer firefighter in a small Bavarian town like Höchberg (on the outskirts of Würzburg), you’re not really hired to bring down little cats stuck in trees or to empty cellars flooded by the Kühbach river due to the spread of urban concrete. Even if you often have to deal with it. No, when you are a volunteer firefighter – in Höchberg as elsewhere – you want to fight wicked fires in the name of order and safety. You want to extinguish evil flames in defence of state control and the prosperity of commerce.
Well, for once, you could say they got what they wanted. At least those on duty the day after their binge, because it was on 2 January at around 3.50 a.m. that the alarm finally sounded in the watchful barracks. After having gone to the edge of the village, at the side of the Zeller forest, they were not disappointed on seeing a large relay antenna lighting up the night with its flames. And if many dead-to-the-world honest citizens were previously unaware of its presence among the majestic trees, even though it was doing them a great service by brightening up their meaningless existence, this is certainly no longer the case since they have been disconnected.
As for the origin of this combustion, which started from the lower cables and went up the mast before the little soldiers of fire [Soldats du Feu, firefighters magazine] came to hinder its progress, it remains of course “of unknown origin” according to the police. But according to the volunteer firefighters, the spontaneous night-time self-combustion of telecommunication structures will not be repeated! Because for once there was something interesting going on in Höchberg, that would indeed be the last straw…
(summary of the German local press, 11 January 2022)
