Fire service cuts-we rarely have house fires any more.

[DangerousMike]

Vipers said:

DangerousMike said:

we had some fire safety training today... the usual questions gets asked which is "if there was a fire, would you enter the building?" and the usual answer "not a bloody chance" (paraphrasing)... don't blame them though.

Absolutely, and if your in the buiding, get out and stay out. Hope we never have to fid out.

trust me, given the contents, i;d be out very quick...

[Nickyboy]

Our local station is home to 3 appliances, a heavy cutting van, chemical van and a comms van, all red!

[ClassicMercs]

Most work these days seems to be in education - fire prevention and driver matters.

After that I guess its work on RTA's with fire coming lower down, alongside rescuing Pussy from the tree.

[Mojooo]

I worked for a Council and part of the job involed educating kids in schools on certain things. At many events I woul meet firefighters. I think a lot of their resources go into educating people now (i.e young kids) - they also fit fire alarms for free in my area.

We also got got use of one of their fire stations for a day as we were doing a stand in the local area. This one fire station was totally unmanned and the only bulk of staff that will turn up for a fire are seemingly retained firefighters - so you coudl argue they are already cutting back / being very flexible.

[Vipers]

All said and done, we must retain sufficient manpower and appliances for the worse case scenario, could be :-

Plane crash on London
Massive chemical/refinery plant fire
Terrorists attacks

No doubt some powers up high will work all this out, as they do with most things and in their infiniate wisdom decide to make cuts left, right and centre.

[cslgirl]

Latest Incidents in London here:

http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/LatestIncidents.asp

I would say there are still quite a few house fires happening.

[cslgirl]

Well, after posting that, nearly had a fire ourselves tonight. Main oven was on, even though it was on the off position and black smoke filling the kitchen. Just as well one of the kids woke me up and I went to check on them and smelt the burning.

[Vipers]

cslgirl said:

Well, after posting that, nearly had a fire ourselves tonight. Main oven was on, even though it was on the off position and black smoke filling the kitchen. Just as well one of the kids woke me up and I went to check on them and smelt the burning.

So do you have a smoke alarm?

[cslgirl]

Vipers said:

cslgirl said:

Well, after posting that, nearly had a fire ourselves tonight. Main oven was on, even though it was on the off position and black smoke filling the kitchen. Just as well one of the kids woke me up and I went to check on them and smelt the burning.

So do you have a smoke alarm?

Yes in the hallway and the upstairs hallway (and I have a firefighter for a husband )

The smoke alarm did not go off as we keep the doors shut at night so it was just kept to the kitchen area. Still stinks in here this morning though. And now have no oven for the time being. That George Grill will now come in handy until a new one arrives.

[DonkeyApple]

CoolC said:

One thing I have noticed, is that there seems to be a lot more cheifs now.

A house a few doors down caught fire when the muppet replacing the felt on the dorma got carried away. Two fire engines turned up and got it sorted very quickly and efficiently before too much damage was caused.

But there appeared to be 5 yes 5 "unmarked" fire cheifs cars with blues and twos there. Seems a lot of cheifs compared to fire fighters.

There are lots of chiefs all over and riddling every UK service. Cutting just one would probably be akin to cutting 3 footmen. A complete cull in this area accros all services would make them leaner, cheaper and upset the onions less.

It's the logical course of action for all these bloated services but sadly humans rarely vote for their own suicide.

Just been looking for an interesting comment article from a Fire Service chief a couple of weeks ago but can't locate it. It was a good read.

[Engineer1]

Where the "fire chief" cars actually carrying a fire chief? could it have been retained firefighters who work closer to the fire than the station? Get the call and head to the fire.