Comment by jacquesm
3 days ago
I had a weird thing happening with that. I just returned from dinner in Germany driving through a semi-industrial area in the netherlands when I spotted a fire in one of the buildings we drove past. I called 112 and was connected to the German dispatcher and they couldn't connect me to the Dutch fire department. So they sent the German firetruck across the border and meanwhile alerted their Dutch colleagues as well. Apparently my phone had not yet re-registered with the dutch network even though we were already well across the border.
> and meanwhile alerted their Dutch colleagues as well
It's great that they were able to do this! I wonder what that looks like on their end. Maybe it's just a matter of having a direct telephone number for the closest Dutch dispatch center?
That’s super cool of them. I guess fire is one of those things where jurisdiction doesn’t have to be exact. And with the lack of physical border there, they could easily just hop over and do their Dutch colleagues a favor.
Emergency services work cross border lots of times but I had never seen it in action. They were super fast too, far faster than I thought was even possible and their dutch colleagues weren't all that far behind. They managed to save the surrounding buildings but the building where the fire started was lost.
I mean they were possibly going to help anyway or even physically closer. And I imagine that sitting around in the fire department does get boring, something to do occasionally is welcome :)
> I mean they were possibly going to help anyway or even physically closer.
There is a good chance of that.
The fire was in Eygelshoven, Nievelsteenstraat. I don't know how close the nearest fire stations are either side of the border.