A Firefighter's Life is the Same Everywhere with Ulrich Koellner

I got an email a few days ago. It was full of comments about the show, like a lot of other emails I get. But this one was different. It came from a firefighter in Germany, and he wrote mostly to discuss the Eurohelmet debate. Their regulations require the new helmets for interior attacks, and a lot of firefighters there don’t like them, either. I was interested to read how things are done there…and much is the same as in the U.S. So I decided to ask the guy who wrote me to come on Code 3. Ulrich Koellner is a 24-year veteran firefighter. He, like 97 percent of firefighters in Germany, is a volunteer. His position is something like a battalion chief—he’s a deputy platoon leader and the head of the hazmat squad.