German Red Cross opens Luckenwalde hub able to supply up to 5,000 people

A warehouse for crisis supplies

The German Red Cross (DRK) opened its civil protection centre in Luckenwalde, in the Teltow-Fläming district of Brandenburg, on Thursday, 29 October 2026. The site covers about 3.4 hectares, roughly the area of five football pitches, and replaces the DRK's earlier central warehouse at Berlin's BER airport in Schönefeld, which had become too small. Tents and emergency shelter equipment for around 1,000 families are already stored there, along with blankets, sleeping bags, field beds, hygiene and baby packs, and kitchen equipment. DRK president Hermann Gröhe said more than 120 vehicles and hundreds of tonnes of material and equipment are on site, including ambulances, large power generators and oxygen supply systems.

Modules for up to 5,000 people

The centre's core is a mobile care module that can be loaded into containers, trucked to a disaster site and assembled into a small town. Once set up, it offers sleeping places, sanitary facilities, meals and medical care for up to 5,000 people. A field hospital is packed and ready to be sent to disaster or conflict zones, where it can be set up within 72 hours and provide medical care for up to 250,000 people, including X-rays, surgery and childbirth, with its own power and water supply. A separate mobile unit can turn river or lake water into drinking water for up to 15,000 people.

Mobile care module5,000

Water purification unit15,000

Field hospital250,000

Mobile care module

5000 people

Water purification unit

15000 people

Field hospital

250000 people

Data from the article text

The federal government wants up to ten of the 5,000-person modules procured and financed by the federal government. Investment in the project is put at 90 million euros.

Volunteers and the case for preparation

Dobrindt said volunteers deliver 95% of the protection the state promises its citizens, and that the challenges keep growing, so politicians must back their work with adequate funding. He pointed to a large power outage in southwest Berlin early this year, caused by arson, which left tens of thousands of households relying on emergency generators for several days. Gröhe cited the Ahrtal flood and the 2015 refugee movement as examples of situations in which large numbers of people suddenly need care, including people who require nursing or medical treatment, along with drinking water and food. He said civil protection had been scaled back in past decades on the assumption that the country was surrounded by friends, and had only partly been rebuilt since. The Red Cross decided in 2023 to act in advance rather than wait for the state.

“Civil protection is back at the top of the agenda.”

Political reaction

At the opening, Dobrindt said civil defence had again become a core concept of German politics and that Germany is a daily target of hybrid warfare.

“We are the daily target of hybrid warfare.”

Dobrindt added that further centres would be built and that Luckenwalde would serve as a teaching example for them. He said the country would need more of them.

“We will build more of them, we will need more of them.”

Brandenburg's Minister-President Dietmar Woidke, a Social Democrat who attended the opening, said the centre showed the Red Cross was focused on readiness and rapid response. He stressed that effective help starts with good preparation. During the opening, rescue workers also ran a simulated transfer of an infectious patient, represented by a doll in an isolator, into an ambulance. Team leader Uwe Steinke said such transfers are prepared for cases such as a patient arriving at BER from a country where Ebola is spreading, and the exercise was declared a success.