TU/e and the fire service of Safety Region Brabant-Southeast have been collaborating for years, says Peter Bloemers (department head of Safety & Security and Location Management at TU/e). The regional fire service lends a hand when larger incidents occur ‘in office hours’ on the campus and the Eindhoven fire service is the first on site when an emergency is reported at TU/e between 17.00 and 08.00 hrs, to be joined by TU/e's own service.

This model, says Bloemers, is now somewhat outdated. He refers to the growing number of homes on the campus and to the regular evening lectures at TU/e: “TU/e is changing every day. It is increasingly important that specialist fire services can also be available rapidly after five o'clock in the afternoon.”

For their part, the regional fire service is busy devising a “new turn-out concept”, as Bloemers knows, for which it is keen to distribute its resources such as (rolling) material and fire fighters across more locations. According to Bloemers, the two fire brigades quickly reached the conclusion that closer cooperation and ‘cohabiting’ on the TU/e grounds offered both parties immediate added value.

“We'll soon have cover 24/7 on our campus and will benefit from their experience in the city, which our campus is increasingly resembling. For their part, they can better serve the city and make use of our specific knowledge, for example, in the area of incidents involving hazardous materials.”

The exact nature of the cooperation will be established as time goes by, says Bloemers. Certainly, as of this summer the regional fire service will have one water tender and a staff of four stationed at the TU/e fire station in the Multimedia pavilion. This rotating quartet will deal primarily with the three fulltime professional fire fighters in the TU/e fire department.

Initially, these three, together with the eighteen university volunteers, will continue to focus on ‘their own backyard’ - with work ranging from handling reports of emergencies and incident response to inspections and training sessions. But Bloemers does not rule out the possibility over the longer term, for example, of the TU/e staff being more widely deployed. “Everything is possible, nothing is obligatory; we'll see from experience what works.”