Your pager sounds. You safely make your way to your local fire
station. Here, you will meet your colleagues and be briefed on your
role and the type and location of the emergency. You carefully put
on your firegear, board the fire engine and travel to the
emergency. This is the part everyone knows about.
But there's a lot of activity behind the scenes. You'll be expected
to make yourself aware of the risks and potential hazards to be
found in the area around your station. And you'll need good people
skills to deal with individuals in panic or distress. You'll also
need to communicate information about community safety and fire
prevention - particularly to schoolchildren, older members of the
community and minority groups within the community.
You will be expected to practice and train to keep your skills up
to date. Physical fitness is important and you will be expected to
maintain fitness for work in your own out of hours time.
Equipment checks are very important - including maintenance on fire
engines, your own uniform and protective clothing, communication
systems and fire hydrants etc.
Retained personnel are paid a retaining fee which is dependent
on the number of hours per week you agree to provide cover for.
Where you provide at least 120 hours per week you will receive 10%
of the annual basic pay of a wholetime firefighter. Where you
provide less than 120 hours per week you will receive a retainer,
not less that 75% of the annual retainer for somebody providing at
least 120 hours per week. You will also be paid each time you
respond to the station from home or work, when working at incidents
and when training.
(For information, the salary for wholetime firefighters on entry to
the job is £19,394. On completion of basic training this rises to
£20,202 and when competence is demonstrated (after about two years
but sometimes sooner), this rises to
£25,850).