Student builds trailer to fight forest fires

Jonas Kerschenlohr, a student in the Bachelor of Business Administration program at THI Business School, has devoted all of his free time over the past twelve months to a single project: building a firefighting trailer that contains special equipment for fighting forest fires. Kerschenlohr has been involved with the Schelldorf-Biberg-Krut Volunteer Fire Department since he was 14 years old. He has had his commitment credited as a social project for his studies.

Since there are no comparable projects in the region, Kerschenlohr and other members of the fire department constructed every screw, every inch of shelving, the dimensions for all the compartments and boxes or hangers for the equipment themselves and installed them in the trailer. Kerschenlohr then completed a theory training session on forest fires and presented the trailer and special equipment to surrounding communities. Last summer, he and his colleagues practiced how to use, maintain and clean the equipment in a large-scale response exercise. For the exercise, a stubble field was set on fire in a controlled manner, which he and his team had to extinguish.

Jonas Kerschenlohr is currently completing his semester abroad at the University of Nevada in Reno, USA. For the practical semester, he is going to Rosenbauer AG in Austria, the world market leader in the construction of fire fighting vehicles.