inform 11.2011 e (pdf file 2 MB) - Duktus

PAGE 16 | INFORM NO. 3 / 2011
hessentag 2012 in Wetzlar
ThE DUKTUS PIPE DEPOT ChANGES INTO AN OPEN-AIR vENUE
The Hessentag (Hesse Day) is the federal state of
Hesse’s annual festival and Wetzlar is in a frenzy
getting ready for the 2012 Hessentag, to be held
from 1 to 10 June. This is the festival’s second
time round in the cathedral city on the river Lahn.
Duktus is making parts of the pipe depot available
for the open-air venue in the Dillfeld industrial
park. Well over 30,000 spectators will be able to
watch the top acts at Hesse’s festival on a giant
show stage against the backdrop of the Duktus
foundry. The band Silbermond will be wowing
fans here on 7 June 2012 on its “Himmel auf”
tour. What other guests will be appearing in the
pipe depot arena is still a secret. What we do
know is that the venue in the Dillfeld Park is a
very good location, with good access for the various
transport links. The grounds of Duktus’s
neighbour, Buderus Edelstahl will be used as a
car park, so visitors will not have far to walk.
The construction work to connect the Dillfeld industrial
park to federal highway B277 and to the
turnoff from the A480 autobahn began on 12
September 2011. Duktus too has got off to a flying
start in getting everything ready for moving
the pipes on the venue. As we hear from Michael
Brockers, of Technical Planning and Environmental
Protection at Duktus in Wetzlar, the first step is
to make suitable agreements with the city of Wetzlar
authorities so that both sides have a basis for
planning: “It is quieter for us during the winter
months, which are now almost here, so we are
making use of this time to organise the storage of
the pipes to suit the needs of the Hessentag. The
areas on the park that are not being used for the
event itself and the free areas that we still have on
the grounds of the Sophienhütte foundry will be
enough to allow us to store adequate quantities
of pipes in April and May at the beginning of the
main installing season.” The operation is due to
be completed by the end of 2011, because the
city will then begin constructing an emergency
escape route running in a northerly direction and
The Open Air Festival forming part of Hessentag 2012 will be
taking place in the northern part of the Duktus pipe depot
the whole of the backstage area will also have to
be levelled and prepared. The main emergency
escape route will run over the bridge over the
river Dill and through the Duktus factory grounds.
A landing area for helicopters is available opposite
the administration building. Duktus CEO Stefan
Weber is confident that consultation between
the people involved will ensure that everything
goes off as planned: “As a company which has
been producing cast iron pipes at the Sophienhütte
works in Wetzlar for 110 years, we naturally
feel that we have an obligation to our city. We are
happy to be able to support our home city, where
many of our employees live, as much as we possibly
can. After all, the guests who come to the
Hessentag from the region and from all over
Hesse are in fact, in a sense, our customers, because
most of them get their drinking water from
ductile iron pipes from Wetzlar. How we can be
part of the Hessentag and in presenting our company
as an employer and an important partner to
the regional suppliers of drinking water is something
we are looking into at the moment. One
thing we have in mind is collaboration with other
companies on the site who we co-operate with in
training our junior employees. We also plan to
celebrate our traditional Family Day in conjunction
with the Hessentag. Our readers will be
learning more about all this in the next issue of inform.”
After the Hessentag, the facilities on the Dillfeld
Park will revert to their old state, but with a slight
advantage for Duktus. The storage areas will
have been improved and the fresh opportunities
offered by the link between the Dillfeld Park and
the B277/A480 roads will be there to be exploited
in the future.
A special training exercise
fIRE BRIGADES, EmERGENCy AID WORKERS AND A SPECIAL
RESCUE TEAm GOT TRAINING IN EmERGENCy CONDITIONS
An emergency can be hell: it hits unexpectedly and hard, and sometimes so suddenly as to defy
description. Emergency services carried out a training exercise for exactly this on 17 September
2011 on the grounds of the Duktus works in Wetzlar. The exercise, worked out by Erwin Strunk, head
of the Wetzlar fire brigade and Oliver Roland, deputy head of the Buderus Edelstahl works fire brigade,
had four strategic aims. It was to be: the exercise between works fire brigades and the public
fire brigade called for by the office of the president of the local administrative district, the exercise
done to complete the 3-year vocational training course for assisting rescuers given by the German
MHD (“Maltese Cross”) emergency aid service, a baptism of fire for a number of the Wetzlar fire
brigade’s young fire-fighters, and a debut in Wetzlar for the “Special Rescue” fast response team of
the Gießen fire brigade. It was possible because Duktus and Buderus Edelstahl had already stated
that they were prepared to make the buildings needed for the exercise available on their own land
and to include the exercise in the planning for other operational requirements.
Michael Brockers, Duktus’s fire protection officer, and Elvira Sames-Dickopf of Duktus Marketing at
Wetzlar, who witnessed the exercise on site, were impressed by the performance of everyone involved
and by the disciplined way in which they worked: “This exercise has shown that in an emergency
we can rely on the units working together properly. “Hats off to such devotion to duty and to
the immaculate planning.”
An exercise on the top part of the water tower: A “casualty” being rescued by rope by the “Special Rescue” fast response team, which
is specially trained in both theory and practice for going into action at great heights and depths and in confined spaces