E.ON bought Sněhurka (Snow White) for firefighters for 5 million

Sněhurka has already got used to living with the firefighters

No, don't worry; we won't spoil the fairytale for the children. We will let the real Snow White keep living in the cottage with the Seven Dwarfs. The one that we will be talking about today doesn't have a beautiful, long dress and white skin. It is steel, red, has a logo tattooed on the left and right sides of its face and it is decorated on its sides, besides the blinds, with a sign – the vehicle was bought by the energy company E.ON. And it's not just any vehicle; it's a special gas-powered fire engine that has already found its place in the garage of the South Moravia County Fire Brigade in Brno.

The fire engine is equipped with two containers with twenty-four pressure cylinders, which contain almost a ton of carbon dioxide. That is suitable for putting out live electrical fires, flammable liquids and gas fires. When CO₂ expands in the line of flow, there is a drop in temperature, whilst part of the CO₂ changes into a solid form of snowflakes. That's why we call the vehicle Snow White.

Snow White was custom made by a German company. "Our experts were directly involved in constructing the vehicle. That helped to save about three million crowns," said the spokesperson for the firefighters, Jaroslav Haid, who added: "The cost of the new fire engine therefore came to five million crowns." And it is this amount that the energy company E.ON donated. In the words of the firefighters, its composition and technology make the vehicle one of the most advanced not only in the Czech Republic but also in Europe. The vehicle will replace the more than thirty year-old Avia gas-powered vehicles that the firefighters have been using until now.

The ceremonial handover of the fire engine connected with training of firefighters and energy company staff was observed not only by representatives of E.ON and the Fire Brigade, but also by representatives of South Moravia County and the town of Brno. The commissioner Stanislav Juránek together with the mayor Roman Onderka wished Snow White not to have to drive out into the field often (statistics show that firefighters in South Moravia County drive out to fires at transformer stations and other electrical facilities about once a week). Zdeněk Vlkojan, director of the Fire Brigade, received a symbolic key to the vehicle as a souvenir.

"One of the significant parts of the company philosophy of the E.ON concern is taking on social responsibility in the regions in which it operates. As energy supplier we try to accommodate the needs of the citizens in our distribution territory as much as possible. At the centre of attention are activities for children and youth, health, and support for projects including the South Moravia County Fire Brigade," said the executive head of E.ON Česká republika, s.r.o., Karel Dietrich Nespěšný.