Tolkkinen Volunteer Fire Department  

Tolkkinen is a village about 6 miles southwest of Porvoo and 25 miles east of the nation's capital Helsinki. For over one hundred years Tolkkinen has been and still is an industrial district. Tolkkinen Volunteer Fire Department (TVFD) was founded in the year 1898 to protect the industry and its employees and the nearby society.

Today, over 100 years later, TVFD is a modern fire department and a part of the fire fighting and rescue department of the city of Porvoo and the region of Itä-Uusimaa (East Uusimaa). TVFD is providing a relatively high number of unit chiefs, legitimated smoke divers, water surface rescuers and other types of specially trained rescue personnel. The personnel maintain its skills by regular practices on Wednesdays and by taking part in different types of educational events.

The modern lifestyle sets high demands, not only on the rescue personnel, but also on the equipment of the fire brigade. Today TVFD provides two rescue and fire fighting vehicles – a Scania tanker unit and a Scania rescue unit. TVFD has also a Volkswagen Wagon for personnel transportation and a 1954 Land Rover Jeep. From the fire station it is only a few kilometers to the archipelago. Therefore TVFD has specialized in both water rescue and oil recovery. TVFD owns a Lamor rescue vessel and also officiate as crew on the two bigger vessels (own by the city of Porvoo) located in Kuggen. Check out these pictures of the equipment.

TVFD’s most common types of emergency responses are automatic fire alarms, terrain fires, building fires and car accidents. The average number emergency responses per year are about 55. Here you can find a complete list of the emergency responses this year.

TVFD is not only fire fighting and rescue service – beside the emergency department, there are also four other sub departments. In the youth department, children in the age of 7-17 years come together and have fun with different fire fighting tasks, like competitions, summer camps and rescue practices. The youth department is an important recruiting resource for the emergency department. The women department works as necessary complement for the emergency department by helping and assisting during emergency responses and practice and educational events. The Tolkkinen Volunteer Fire Department Orchestra is one of the few active Fire Department Orchestras in Finland. The Orchestra plays traditional march music on TVFD's and other fire fighting events and also performs with a modern repertory. The veteran department works with different kind of maintenance tasks at the fire station and with the equipment and also with different restoration objects.

For more information, please contact Chief of volunteer fire department Mr. Roger Hacksell or webmaster Mr. Johnny Holmström (contact information).