Cédric Gantzer from CGDIS talks to Lisa Burke about the emergency services in Luxembourg, what they do and how to help.

Have you heard of CGDIS? Perhaps the summer floods brought this acronym to the fore. It stands for Corps Grand-Ducal d'Incendie et de Secours; Luxembourg Fire and Rescue Corps.

Cédric Gantzer, Chef de département for the Director General at CGDIS, is a trained firefighter himself. Here he talks about what the emergency services do, since the centralised unit was created in 2018.

Most of the firefighters in Luxembourg are volunteers - this now stands at about 4000 compared to the 600 professional firefighters, soon to increase. Firefighter itself is rather a misnomer for the range of work they need to be trained to carry out. If you want to become a volunteer for your community all of the details are the on the website.

112 is the emergency number you call when you're in an emergency situation. Currently only about a quarter of their calls are actual emergencies. This number, by the way, works across Europe.

The mission of CGDIS is to:

- Protect and save people

- Protect and save animals

- Protect and save goods

- Protect the nature

- Teach the population in matters of first help, resilience a.s.o.

If you want to watch the move of CGDIS from their historic centre in Route d'Arlon, to their new premises in Cloche d'Or, there will be a procession of all fire vehicles and other emergency service vehicles on the morning of Sunday 12th September through the city.

Check out my podcast from last week with Tim Pauly if you you want to learn more about the Grand-Ducal Police Department. Remember the police emergency number is 113 in Luxembourg.

Please subscribe to my series and leave me a review - it really helps my podcast to be found - and thank you for taking the time to do so!

You can also get in touch with me via social media and the like if you have any thoughts for future podcasts.