Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service aims to improve the time its fire engines get to emergency incidents in rural areas by allowing some fire engines to be sent with three firefighters.
Currently, although the Service aims to have five firefighters on each fire engine, it allows fire engines to go with four firefighters on board. It will only send three crews to bin fires or small animal rescues.
On-call fire station
The Service is looking to send a crew of three, if that’s all that’s available at an on-call fire station, to all incident types in line with practices in neighboring Suffolk and some other fire and rescue services.
This means a fire engine could arrive at an emergency in a rural area several minutes quicker than it does now.
Improving response time
If an emergency occurs in their area, on-call firefighters more alert goes off and rush to the fire station"
Chief Fire officer Chris Strickland explained, “We are always striving to improve the time it takes us to get a fire engine to the scene of an emergency from the initial 999 calls.”
“On-call fire stations cover our rural towns and villages, so firefighters carry pagers, go about their daily business and if an emergency occurs in their area, their more alert goes off and they rush to the fire station to crew the fire engine.”
Reasons for recruitment
“We struggle to recruit on-call firefighters for a whole host of reasons and often our rurally based fire engines are deemed ‘unavailable for use as there are less than four firefighters available to crew them. We often send the next fully crewed available fire engine but that can be several miles away, increasing the time it takes for us to arrive.”
“By allowing a crew of three to respond to all incident types, we can get a fire engine to incidents much quicker and the crew can either deal with the incident safely or get everything ready to start dealing with the incident as soon as more resources arrive to make it a safe operation.”
On-call firefighters
We believe we can improve our service to the public by getting trained firefighters to an incident more rapidly"
Chris continued, “My greatest wish is that we always have at least five firefighters available day and night at our on-call stations and it’s certainly what we will continue to strive for. We are committed to continuing our efforts to recruit more on-call firefighters and would love for more people to come forward to find out more about a rewarding role with us as an on-call firefighter.”
“But we also have to manage the current situation and continue to look for ways to improve. This is one way we believe we can improve our service to the public by getting trained firefighters to an incident more rapidly.”
Live in proximity
You must live within a five-minute time of an on-call fire station and be 18 or older. The Service is particularly looking for people who can be available in the daytime.
Group Commander Kev Andrews is in charge of the on-call service. He added, “Being an on-call firefighter is a paid role so as well as being incredibly rewarding and allowing people to give something back to their local community, it can help people financially too.”
Increased opportunities
“Over the years we have suffered from industries and jobs moving out of our smaller towns, so people no longer work in the town or village where they live as was often the case.”
“However, with home working becoming more popular since the pandemic, we hope this opens up greater opportunities for more people who couldn’t previously apply as their office was out of town.”
