Emergency Preparedness abroad: Germany – the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (Bundesanstalt Technisches Hilfswerk)

The Technisches Hilfswerk is the German government agency charged with responding to disasters at home and abroad. In a country of about 82 million (source: CIA World Fact Book), 80,000 people work for the Dederal Agency for Technical Relief. That’s roughly one person per 1,000 – 99% of whom are volunteers.

technisches-hilfswerk-180px-thw.png

 

One of the THW logos, courtesy of Wikipedia.

According to the United States Census Population Clock

, there were, as of today, 301 million peoplein the United States. If the same proportion of people in the United States were active as volunteers in disasters, we’d have over 30 million volunteer first responders.

 

Think about that – and we’ll be back to discuss it – as soon as we’ve gotten bug or two out of WordPress.