Your firefighters are your insurance; if you ever have to dial 999, we’ll respond. Whether you’re trapped in a lift or involved in a car accident, your child is locked in a car or your property is on fire – you call, firefighters respond.
It seems perverse, then, that we live in a time where people in authority can say that because fire calls are down, we don’t need as many of the people responsible for making our communities safer. Firefighters do far more than respond to fire calls. Some 70% of fire crews in England and Wales were deployed to tackle flooding in 2014, for example. The scale and scope of operational demands continue to expand: the role of the modern firefighter is more diverse than ever before.
This comes at a time when our budgets are increasingly cut and the only people mounting a genuine challenge to resist these dangerous cuts – members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) – are maligned by politicians and their employers. The cuts being forced on your Fire and Rescue Service represent a very dangerous game in which you, the public, do not even realise the price of the stake.
If something goes wrong, we will respond and deal with it; but to do that, we need the right numbers and the right equipment. We call this the right “speed and weight” of attack to give you – the caller – the very best chance of surviving. Last year we made 38,000 rescues; that is one for every firefighter in the UK.
But for many of us, the cuts are proving too much and too dangerous. Good firefighters, good friends of mine, are leaving the service. The latest FBU figures show there are now 7,000 fewer firefighters today than in 2010, despite the increase in workloads and government expectations.
The national dispute over pension reform in the fire service left thousands of families facing an uncertain future. The dispute was divisive and bitter. I saw friends sacked after taking lawful industrial action, or having different political opinions to those of their bosses. All we wanted to do was protect the terms and conditions handed down to us; I wanted to defend a public post that children dream of occupying, as I once did.
I have experienced so much heartbreak in the fire service. Firefighters forge strong bonds with each other all over the world. On my nephew’s birthday in April 2010, I sat and watched the news break as two more firefighters died at an incident in Southampton. I remember the look on the faces of members of my family as I headed to work that night. It was the third time since I had joined that I observed a minute’s silence outside the station with the flag at half-mast. It seemed to be all too common and unfortunately, lessons were not learned. Between 2004 and 2014, there were 13 firefighter deaths, double that of the previous 10 years.
The risks we face operationally are matched only by the risks we face psychologically. The silent killer of all emergency service workers is mental health. The pressure of cuts, pension reform and the financial strain of austerity are heavy burdens on top of what we deal with in everyday operational response. The patient in agony you have to hold down on the roadside after a traffic collision, so a doctor can perform emergency surgery. The man you desperately try to drag out from the fire rolling over your heads. The girl who dies in front of you while you work with paramedics to save her sister. The mental toll of these experience begins to add up, especially when all we want is to be able to do our jobs safely and be rewarded fairly for them.
It may seem overwhelming, but there is hope. So long as people are willing and able to fight, campaign and hold decision-makers to account, there is hope that the Fire and Rescue Service can be saved. Votes are the only currency our politicians understand. If they see the public truly standing shoulder to shoulder with their firefighters by signing petitions, lobbying their MPs and joining up with the many campaigns, rallies, protests and direct action that takes place around the country, we can turn around these attacks.
We become firefighters to give strangers a second chance at life. You can support us to fight for a second chance at doing the job we love.
This series aims to give a voice to the staff behind the public services that are hit by mounting cuts and rising demand, and so often denigrated by the press, politicians and public. If you would like to write an article for the series, contact tamsin.rutter@theguardian.com
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