I live in Liverpool U K home of the Beatles. The city centre is covered by one fire engine, tonight that fire station is closed because they have not got enough fire fighters to man the only engine based there, unbelievable in such a big UK city. I welcome your comments. Also a merry Christmas to you all on this excellent group.
British Fire Service a disgrace
- Thread starter alycidon
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Liverpool is part of the National Fire Service. It seems as if they would relocate a company? If it normal for them to close a company?
alycidon said:
"alycidon', in the U.S. some larger U.S. cities have used the term "Brownout". In that case if the city fire department manning level falls, various fire companies would be unmanned. It would seem to happen in firehouses where there might be both an engine or truck company.
One firehouse in Newark, I think was Ladder 1 and an Engine company. The Engine company had gone on a run and I wanted to get a rig shot of that Truck Co as it was a new rig. When I knocked on the door there was no answer. I rang the doorbell several times (I could hear it ring from the outside).
I thought to myself what if there's a fire and these guys don't even want to bother answering the door.
Then as I started to walk away, the guys on the Engine came back from that run. I asked them about getting somebody to pull that rig out. One of the (Engine) guys did that for me.
After they did that, they told me that the Truck Co is "Browned out for the day". That Truck wasn't even manned. No wonder nobody answered the door.
The guys told me that the city does that. People see the cars parked in the firehouse parking lot and they think everything is okay, the fire trucks are manned. There's no big neighborhood uproar about closing a firehouse. Basically the neighborhood was being cheated and scammed.
Washington, D.C., was another city where companies were "browned out" for the day. Every morning they would give a radio test and announce the "Browned Out Companies" for the day.
I think a documentary was made called; "We're No Hero's" in which that is heard at one part of the video. I'm sure it's on youtube.
As I remember there were many cities in the northeast in which "Browning Out Companies" daily was a normal practice. I don't know how many cities do that these days.
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Another thing I have seen done is when you put a company OOS for good in a two or three bay house and they move in a spare piece for storage to deceive the locals.
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CFDMarshal said:
No Rev.....Liverpools Fire Service falls under Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service. Each County in England has its own independent Fire Service Authority a bit like Ireland
Then the rest of the UK is split like this.....
Scotland recently went away from this structure and is now called the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service
Wales is split in two - North Wales Fire & Rescue Service and South Wales Fire & Rescue Service
and Northern Ireland is Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service
enginecap said:
No EngineCap nothing to do with Brexit
manhattan said:
Manhattan my own personal feelings on Unions is they are not as strong as they used to be. Also members of the public tent to kind of ignore anything to do with Fire & Police unions. Like everywhere people tend to only be aware of Fire Unions when theres being a tragic incident or when they need them themselves. One positive thing for the Fire Brigade Union in the UK is it recently won a High Court decision on "the pensions age discrimination case" which was a great victory for new Firefighters
Im really surprised that a city as big as Liverpool has no Fire Station overnight. If its a thing that its a staff shortage for one night etc a local Retained Station should be drafted in to cover the station so cover is maintained. Thats what happens here. If a whole time
pump station (outside of Dublin) is called to an ongoing incident the nearest Retained stations will be dispatched to the city station on Standby (Relocation).
But i would imagine that this has more to do with Government Policy then anything else. The Tory Government are no friends to the Public Sector worker and are probably just looking to save money by cutting Fire & Police Officer numbers
In Ireland the biggest issue we are finding (outside our main cities) is trying to recruit Retained Firefighters (On Call Fighters) for a number of reasons
- Local Towns have suffered following the recession and locals interested is just not there
- very restrictive life style (having to live or work within 5 mins of the station)
- Call volumes can be low due to calls being vetted by Sr Officers and retainer money (yearly standard payment is about ?7/8k). If your call volume is low your not adding money to that figure so financially its not worth your while
But those issues we have shouldn't be the case in a city like Liverpool. I'm really amazed to read this