Alerter

Good firefighter, bad firefighter

Some time ago I expressed interest in becoming involved with the Learn and Live campaign. Learn and Live is a hard-hitting road safety campaign aimed at 17-24 year olds and tends to be delivered in colleges and high schools across Suffolk.

Before Christmas I'd seen the display boards set up at the station and had also had the chance to watch the presentation. I made enquiries as to whether retained firefighters could deliver the sessions and was told we most certainly could.

Having put this rash offer to the back of my mind it did come as a shock when Simon Reeves put me on standby for three presentations at Lowestoft College.

So for the last week I've been running through the presentation, knowing that it is a no holds barred 40 minutes of graphic images and startling statistics. And it doesn't matter how many times I see those road safety adverts, I still get a cold chill when they are run back to back.

My plans were thrown into disarray when Rachel asked me whether I was going to be the good firefighter or the bad firefighter. Once the scenario had been explained I opted for the good firefighter for the first of the two presentations.

Al Soards and I arrived at Lowestoft College in plenty of time and set up all our gear in the Students Common Room. The first group filed in quietly and sat down rather sheepishly, not knowing what to expect.

And then it hits them, right between the eyes. This presentation is full-on and you can see the group gradually sinking further in to their chairs and covering their faces to hide from the imagery they are witnessing on-screen.

At the end I ask if there are any questions. Not a sausage! They fill in their questionnaires and then shuffle slowly and quietly back out of the room.

We then had a bit of a gap before the next group were due. This time Al and I reversed our roles and I became 'bad firefighter'. So I did the warning to the group about the graphic nature of the presentation, making no apologies for its content. I think the message was received and understood.

About half-way through Al's presentation I noticed a guy on the front row, head bowed and eyes shut. His mates must know the score because a gentle prod was required from one of the staff to get him to full consciousness again. He looked over at me and I fixed him with my best Paddington Bear stare (now that's scary!). A few minutes later and he's losing it again. A cunning plan Baldrick! When Al is doing the seatbelt piece I cut in, step in front of the audience and give them a wakeup story. I recount an incident in which one of the passengers wasn't wearing a seatbelt, describing his injuries and what I had to do to remove him from the car. It worked. That guy didn't nod off again!

Having seen the reaction when a true story is being recounted certainly makes these presentations hit the mark. Stories are better than lectures... None so than when Al recounted the story of how he lost four friends in an RTC and his best friend was seriously injured. He should have been in that car but because he was late he didn't make the journey. It's little wonder that Al is 100% behind this Learn and Live campaign.

We must have done something right. Since the first two presentations of Learn and Live the College have signed us up for 7 more sessions! We're also hoping to get into the local high schools to spread the word further.
So if anyone reading this knows of a group of 17-24 year olds that would benefit from the Learn and Live presentation, just drop a line to Al at alan.soards@fire.suffolkcc.gov.uk.

Rural camper van...

Well, I've waited a while before being able to add this post.

I've been doing the odd day here and there of FTE cover (Full Time Equivalent). There's around thirty of us in Suffolk, wholetime and retained, that can be called on to go to a Fire Station in the county to make up crew numbers so that the fire engine can be kept 'on the run' and hence available for calls.

It is becoming harder to recruit retained firefighters due largely to the fact that people have to travel further afield for their normal day job. Gone are the days when the crew of the local fire engine all lived and worked in the same village. And because of this it is sometimes difficult to maintain the minimum number of crew to man the fire engine (minimum is four).
I also think the Brigade aren't proactive enough in trying to recruit retained firefighters. They also need to be more flexible with how they deal with an individuals availability. It might be that someone doesn't live in the village where cover is needed but they work there from 8 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon. And that is just the time when the guys who live in the village have left and gone to work. I'm sure many 'managers' in the fire service have been on courses where they are taught to 'think out of the box' or employ 'blue sky thinking'. Now could be the time to use that new found knowledge!

Anyway, I digress... Back to the plot.

Last Friday (18th January) I was spending my first day of FTE cover at Framlingham, in the heart of Suffolk. They didn't have a spare alerter for either myself or Peter Ham who was out there with me.
We were just having a chat when I heard the turnout printer rattle off a message. Not too startling as we had already had two admin messages come through. So we ambled through to the front office only to find we'd got a shout - came through as a car fire.

Within a minute other members of the crew turned in and we set off on a tour of the country lanes of Suffolk, eventually being guided in by the plume of smoke in the distance. As we got closer we could see it was a camper van that was on fire from front to back.

So, on a muddy lane in the middle of nowhere I got my first FTE shout and a BA wear to boot!

Hoping the guys from Fram will be inviting me back - looks like the place to be for the action!!

So you're a part-time firefighter then?

Very few members of the public really understand what a retained firefighter is and what our role in today's Fire Service consists of.

This lack of knowledge is partly down to the media, the individual Fire Service's around the UK and all of us retained firefighters.

It doesn't help when the press, trying to explain the word 'retained', describe us as part-time firefighters or volunteers. We're neither. You can't get much more full-time than carrying an alerter around with you day and night, virtually 365 days of the year. And we're not volunteers. We get paid a retainer (hence retained firefighters). It's about £2500 per year or around £7.50 a day (if you take off leave entitlement). So for around 31p an hour we make ourselves available for any incident, 24 hours a day - now that's what I call value for money! Actually Pay and Conditions is a whole separate rant - so back to the plot.

The vast majority of UK Fire and Rescue Services rely heavily on retained firefighters to keep the fire service operational. Take Suffolk as an example. There are 35 fire stations of which only 4 are manned by wholetime firefighters, 24 hours a day. A few are day-manned, so retained firefighters take over at night but the majority are one or two-pump fire stations located in small towns and villages across the county.
In these small communities many of the local people understand how the fire service works in their area - it's likely that they know of someone that's on the local crew.

It's at stations in the larger towns that the public are blissfully unaware of how the fire service operates.

If there is a six-pump shout in Lowestoft, only one fire engine will be a wholetime pump. All the others will be crewed by retained firefighters from Lowestoft and the surrounding area (Beccles, Wrentham, Southwold etc). But to the public, when they dial 999 and ask for Fire, they don't actually care whether the fire engines that turn up are crewed by wholetime or retained firefighters. They've got an emergency and they need it dealing with. And it's right that there shouldn't be any distinction between us in the eyes of the public.

I just feel that the likes of Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service are missing a PR trick here. All organisations whether they are public or private sector want and need good publicity. Across the county we are desparately short of retained firefighters - recruitment is always difficult. So why doesn't the Fire Service get its act together and proudly show off what is probably the best resource it will ever have - its retained firefighters. Its best resource will never be its kit whether it be fire engines, personal protective equipment or its organisational standards (these are ripe for rants of their own!).
If you've got it, flaunt it. Any turned on business knows that its staff are its biggest asset. They make or break an organisation.

So come on Suffolk, let's get those local authority wheels turning, and tell your 'customers' how good your staff are, all of them - retained firefighters, wholetime firefighters, control room staff and the myriad of people that keep the service going.

Do you know, I almost feel better for having a bit of a rant, a bit of a whinge. Well I'm at that age when I can officially claim membership of the Grumpy Old Men's Club. No doubt this won't be the last of these 'getting it off your chest' posts.
If there's anyone out there who'd like to rant, rave or whinge (not about the missus, the kids, the credit crunch or anything else), just let me know. Just send me your thoughts via the Comments link underneath this post.

The end. Phew!

How not to drive a fire engine!

A lesson in driving from our friends across the Pond!

Enough said!

Three shouts in one day - it's just like the good old days!

Date: 2nd January 2008
Time: 1114
Type: Flat fire
Address: Normanston Drive Lowestoft
Initial Attendance: Normanhurst 01 and 02
Final Attendance: Make Pumps 3, persons reported - Normanshurst 05

It was my first full day back at work today. Felt like it was time to get my head around all that's got to be done in the year ahead. Also nice to get out of the house and away from the tins of chocs and other unhealthy fare.

Whenever my alerter goes off while I'm at work it seems to take an age to get out of the building, run to my car and then negotiate the journey to the station. But in reality, it probably takes me under four minutes to get in.
Today my patience was severely tested by a learner driver on St.Peters Street, outside Lowestoft College. The half mile or so from office to there went like a dream - no traffic allowing me to drive at a full thirty miles per hour (?!*). However, there was an ambulance that had pulled up next to a line of parked cars, dealing with their own incident. There was nothing coming from the other direction but this learner just sat there behind the ambulance. I could see that Pete Brown was directly behind the learner and was starting to twitch as he toyed with the idea of overtaking the learner and the ambulance. I must admit that six cars back the thought had occurred to me too!

We had just cleared this little 'jam' and got onto Normanston Drive to see Ladder 1 pulled up looking for the incident.

I wasn't in time to get on Ladder 2 but just as they were going mobile we heard the assistance message come in from Blue Watch. I drove the PRT (Normanshurst 05) the short distance to the incident.
Thankfully no one was in the flat which had quite a bit of damage to it.

As the last pump in we were the first to be made available. We immediately got a Fire Priority message from Control to proceed to an AFA (Automatic Fire Alarm) at Manor Court, Lowestoft. We got there to find that a tea towel placed on a hob had caught fire - not the best place to dry a tea towel, me thinks!

Just to explain a Fire Priority. This is the term used by Control when they need to mobilise a pump to an incident while the pump is away from its home station. As a retained crew we don't often get these so when Control call you with Fire Priority it's a bit of a shock to the system...

We hadn't been back on station more than a few minutes when the bells went sending Ladder 2 to an AFA at Lowestoft Police Station.

This time Horney Ben made the turnout but Rachael 'Princess' O'Connell didn't because she had, wait for it... gone to a Spice Girls concert!

What a start to the New Year!

Date: 1st January 2008
Time: 1325
Type: Bungalow fire
Address: Whitton Close, Lowestoft
Initial Attendance: Normanshurst 01 and Clifton 01
Final Attendance: Make Pumps 3 for BA - Normanshurst 02

We had my parents for dinner on New Years day - makes a change from turkey! (corney, I know...) I was just clearing away after the main course when I heard the wholetimers disappear off on a shout. I said to my Dad that it would be good to get a shout, what with it being 'double-bubble' on a Bank Holiday. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish anything nasty on anybody just to get some double-time. Just something simple would be nice!

No sooner had I made my wish and my alerter goes off.

First across to the station to see that we were on standby - the wholetime crew and Clifton had gone to a fire in a bungalow in Whitton Close, Lowestoft. Very soon after I had booked a couple of crews with Control the bells went - the bungalow was now Make Pumps 3 for BA.

I was driving and the lack of traffic allowed us to get to the south end of town quite quickly.

When we pulled up you could see smoke seeping from the roof tiles. A BA crew had been sent into the loft to deal with the fire.

Roof tiles were then removed to expose the burnt joists and rafters. All of the contents of the loft, most of which was burnt or charred, was removed to the back garden. As little water as possible was used to minimise further damage to the property.

It seems a neighbour had spotted the smoke coming from the roof and had raised the alarm. The three teenagers of the house were blissfully unaware of the fire as they watched TV in the lounge. Their parents were away for New Year and had left them in charge! Needless to say, it wasn't through any wrongdoing on their part. It was an electrical fault in the loft that had started the fire.
I think it was the grandparents that arrived a bit later to take the somewhat bewildered teenagers in for the night.

A roof sheet was secured over the the 20 foot square hole in the roof, hopefully keeping the worst of the weather out.

Not a pleasant way to start the New Year. But it could have been worse. Losing possessions is one thing, losing members of the family would have been far worse...

A special mention must go to Andy 'Begs' Jackson, normally of Red Watch but riding with Clifton for this incident. Having read this blog he wanted to get a mention for this shout and suggested I might use the word 'hero' in the same sentence! Begs you're a hero - just for sitting up in the loft in BA and handing down the still smouldering contents. At least you weren't the one to stick his foot through the kitchen ceiling...

And finally... a welcome to Rachael 'Princess' O'Connell and Ben 'Horney Ben' Horne, both wholetimers who have decided to take the Queen's shilling and ride retained in their spare time.

This was our first shout of the New Year and Rachael got a turnout... Ben missed out as he was on duty with Green Watch.