Your local Fire Station, wherever you are in the UK., is there to provide an emergency response to a vast range of incidents.
Primarily, our main objective is to save life, then protect property from fire and finally, to provide humanitarian services. This used to be our 'creed' but has been replaced with things like 'mission statements' which say, more or less, the same thing.
Putting it in lay terms, we attend Fires, Fire Alarm actuations, Road Traffic Accidents, Chemical, Radiation and Biological incidents (thankfully, not too many of those), people stuck in lifts, floodings (both domestic and commercial [we do levy a charge for commercial floodings]) and of course, cats up trees!, to name but a few.
That's just the 'reactive' part of our job but we do have an increasing 'proactive' part.
Fire Safety has, for many years now, been at the forefront of our workload and, in the last few years, we have embarked on a Community Fire Safety programme.
This is basically, local initiatives, researched, devised and implemented, by the Firefighters, local to you, which means that they can identify particular problems, that may be fairly unique to a district, area, road or even building and, devise a way of addressing this problem.
This may mean carrying out leaflet drops, setting up demonstrations or even supplying and fitting smoke alarms, where appropriate.
Personally, I've been involved in researching ways of gaining access to premises which have had security grills fitted over doors and windows. We produced an educational leaflet for the public and also are now in the process of trialling new forced entry equipment.
If you'd like a copy of the leaflet (or would like copies of any of the many Fire Safety leaflets we produce), or have a query about Fire safety, send an e-mail to me at:- lewis.orrow@london-fire.gov.uk This is my e-mail address at work and, with luck, I should be able to send you a scanned version.
The London Fire Brigade is committed to this and I believe that it certainly fits in with the first part of our 'creed' as mentioned earlier 'to save life'. It doesn't really matter if you save someones life by dragging them out of a burning building or spending 10 minutes fitting a smoke alarm. Hopefully, the end result is the same and, to my mind, the latter is a much more attractive prospect.
On top of this, there's the Statutory Fire Safety work we have to carry out (commercial premises etc.,), maintenance and testing of equipment, training, first aid, testing of fire hydrants etc.
If you're interested in a career in the Fire Service,for London visit our website via the links page, look in your local Job Centre or newspapers, or visit the site below.
