Firefighters - An Overrated Job?

Mancunian

I used to think firemen had a terrible job, pulling burn corpses out of buildings and risking their life on a regulare basis.

I became friends with one several years ago and it was a standing joke by him and his colleagues of the praise they received.

On nights he slept most of the time, occasionally waking to play pool and in the 20 years of service he said he'd had never risked his life and never had any bad cases.

This final thing that peeves me off is that (unlike me) all women love them. ;0(

victor2

Ask anyone who's been saved by a firefighter and you'll probably get a different opinion.
Don't know about loving them though.

s_b

im not a fan of them
they cost me plenty when they went beyond their station
i would make them more accountable for their actions

victor2

Then we'd risk getting something like the situation when two PCSO's didn't try to save a drowning child because they weren't trained to deal with that type of incident.

matt002_2

My partner is a firefighter and no - they don't really risk their lives anymore, it's all about fighting the fire from the outside if there is no persons inside the building. There is soooo much h&s to reduce accidents/injury etc. tbh, the majority of the shouts are car accidents and not fires. I couldn't do the job though - he tells me awful stories of people jumping in front of trains that they clear up, or cutting people down from rope who have commited suicide with the distraught wife outside with the police or arriving at car accidents where kids have died, or pulling dead bodies out of car wrecks. Just the Other day they had a shout where a young girl was a sack of bones in the footwell of her car because the impact was so hard. They were recovering her from the car and her mobile was ringing - on the screen was 'mum' calling :-(. So nah, they don't really risk their lives, but see a lot of distressing stuff... They laugh about it between themselves - only way to deal with it.

matt002_2

Just to add to my last post.... Thats not all in one shift lol. And yea - there is a lot of watching telly, playing pool etc. I guess they need to be ready for when they are needed hence the sitting around!

martinthebandit

As someone who spent the best part of 30 years as a firefighter and all I can say is I would have hated being at such a quiet station as your mate is.

....... and to the comment from the firefighters wife, do you really think we tell our wives everything? I know I never did.

Oh, and when I was between wives I can confirm that lots of women love a firefighter

Nilrem

I think matt002 sums it up pretty well.

They don't normally risk their lives much anymore unless someone is in danger, but they have to put up with a lot of stuff that many people wouldn't be able to cope with - things like recovering bodies from wrecks etc.
They have to be on station for fast responses at night, hence they might not have much to do overnight, but during the day when they are not on a call out they are generally doing training, maintiance on the equipment and 101 other tasks such as fire safety inspections, fire prevention (including fitting and testing smoke alarms) etc.

S B what did they do?
IIRC the fire service have a fairly wide remit to cause damage if necessary to fight a fire, or reach one - including damaging vehciles that are in the way/parked illegally if they have to do so to get past them to a fire, or gain access to things like water access points.

Nilrem

victor2 wrote: »

Then we'd risk getting something like the situation when two PCSO's didn't try to save a drowning child because they weren't trained to deal with that type of incident.

slightly OT, but iirc in that instance they applied some much hated common sense - from memory it turned out the child was not visible when they arrived, and they only had a vague idea as to his last location.
Jumping in and splashing around would have been the least effective thing they could do - you can be in water a few feet from someone and not see them if they are below the surface, whilst if you're above the water you have a chance of seeing them over a fairly large area (it's also considered a bad idea to jump in without some equipment unless you know the water, are a very good swimmer or at least have a very good idea of the location of the person in trouble).

victor2

Nilrem wrote: »

slightly OT, but iirc in that instance they applied some much hated common sense - from memory it turned out the child was not visible when they arrived, and they only had a vague idea as to his last location.
Jumping in and splashing around would have been the least effective thing they could do - you can be in water a few feet from someone and not see them if they are below the surface, whilst if you're above the water you have a chance of seeing them over a fairly large area (it's also considered a bad idea to jump in without some equipment unless you know the water, are a very good swimmer or at least have a very good idea of the location of the person in trouble).

Fair comment. I was just trying to illustrate a possible scenario and that incident came to mind - probably because of the negative publicity it created.

yangptangkipperbang

Nilrem wrote: »

but iirc in that instance they applied some much hated common sense

like this ??

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/22/man-drowned-lake-firefighters

Note that this is from the Guardian NOT the Daily Wail............