From the point of view of the fire police, the New Year’s Eve firecrackers in the district of Munich went relatively smoothly. The fire brigade operations center reported 40 operations, mostly bushes, garbage cans and trees caught fire. However, no people were harmed. Of course, there were still injuries and probably fatalities: animals that found themselves completely unprepared in the middle of the night and exposed to an inferno that swept over them in the form of rockets and firecrackers.
And it was birds in particular who suffered, such as three birds of prey that were handed over to the owl and bird of prey sanctuary in Otterfing on New Year’s Day. “It’s the same every year,” says its manager Alfred Aigner, who has long spoken out against unbridled firecrackers on New Year’s Eve and in favor of central fireworks. One of the birds of prey suffered an approach trauma, says Aigner. This means that he was startled by detonations and hissing rockets in the middle of the night, fled in a blind panic and crashed into trees or houses. Another bird of prey probably “got a load straight away,” reports Aigner.
“It’s hell for the animals,” says Heike Reball, who runs a veterinary practice for birds and exotic animals in Unterhaching. The veterinarian assumes that the number of unreported cases of injured or killed animals is high. Many can only be found much later or become victims of predators as a result of their injuries. “The forest no longer releases many animals,” when in the middle of the night and while they are resting there is a sudden crack and bright light blinds them, “then it’s like war for them,” says Reball, who considers it an impertinence that a Part of the population wanted to celebrate with rockets and firecrackers and everyone else had to suffer as a result. It is definitely worth considering whether the population should vote on a ban on fireworks on New Year’s Eve in a referendum, says Heike Reball.
Korbinian Pieper, chief physician at the veterinary clinic in Oberhaching, is happy that it is located in an industrial area where there is not much shooting. Even animals that are otherwise calm and relaxed would react extremely to the roar at the turn of the year. The animals were therefore housed in the basement in soundproof rooms at this time. The problem of anxiety also plays a major role in the Ismaning veterinary clinic. Some owners would have to calm their animals with medication or bring them to rooms without windows. Fortunately, according to a spokesman for the veterinary clinic, this is not in a residential area where rockets are rising and firecrackers are detonating. Cattle and horses are particularly sensitive, says a clinic spokesman.
This is well known at the Brandlhof, a horse boarding house in Straßlach. Luckily the horses are kept in a box and not in an open stable where they could hurt themselves if they panic. Nevertheless, some owners stayed with their animals on New Year’s Eve to calm them down. “Some can cope with the stress, others turn their wheels,” says a spokesman for the horse pension, which is close to the road, not far from the Roiderer restaurant, where there was a lot of shooting in the parking lot on New Year’s Eve.
The noise was not only horrible for herself, but also for animals, especially birds, writes SZ reader Brigitte Broßmann from Neubiberg. She advocates a ban on private fireworks, also because it is no longer up-to-date in times of climate change. “That should also arrive in politics,” she writes.