Fire department at the limit

Extreme operation: recovery of a corpse in Wanne

The bathtub was recovered from the apartment using a crane.(Bild: Berufsfeuerwehr Klagenfurt)

The work of the fire department is always demanding, but some operations push the firefighters to their physical and mental limits. On Friday in Klagenfurt, for example, they were called out by the undertaker for a delicate operation.

The body had probably been lying in a bathtub in the water for several days. "Physics prevented a normal recovery of the body with straps or a special hose," explains Wolfgang Germ from the Klagenfurt professional fire department. "The person probably weighed just under 160 kilograms."

Extraordinary operations require extraordinary measures.

Wolfgang Germ, Berufsfeuerwehr Klagenfurt

Bild: Uta Rojsek-Wiedergut

As neither the funeral home nor the police were equipped for the operation, the professional fire department had to be called out. "Three people worked in the small apartment for three to four hours with heavy breathing protection. Each of them used three bottles of compressed air," says Germ. "First they had to pry out the bathtub, then enlarge the window so that the crane could get the tub out."

The bathtub was retrieved with a crane.(Bild: Berufsfeuerwehr Klagenfurt)

The firefighter instructs the crane.(Bild: Berufsfeuerwehr Klagenfurt)

The breathing protection was necessary because the body was already well advanced in decomposition. "The smell in the entire street was enormous after the bathtub was loaded onto a truck," Wolfgang Germ continues, describing the situation. "All this when it was still almost 30 degrees in the evening."

In order to deal with the psychological stress, talks were held with the emergency services in the evening and again on Saturday morning.

"There is also a contact point at Klagenfurt City Council. Unfortunately, there are always demanding operations, such as on railroad tracks or when rescuing particularly heavy people," says Germ. "You can't get rid of the images, luckily the colleagues are now on vacation."