A List of shouts attended in 1999
A list of shouts attended in 2000
A list of shouts attended in 2001
A list of shouts attended in 2002
A list of shouts attended in 2003
A list of shouts attended in 2004
A list of shouts attended in 2005
A list of shouts attended in 2006
A list of shouts attended in 2007
A brief history of my service.
Embaresment During BA Training.
I work, part time as a retained fire fighter. (For our American cousins the nearest I can describe it, is a volunteer fire fighter, however I do receive some pay!)
It's not a bit like London's Burning! We don't sit around the station drinking tea and winding each other up all day. We go about our ordinary lives, until the bleeper goes off. That's our signal to high-tail it to the station , and take the pump to the fire scene.
I think a lot of people would be surprised to find just how much of the fire service cover in the UK, is provided by retained fire fighters. In Hampshire half of the fire fighting staff are retained, yet they cover approximately 46 of the 56, or so, stations in the county, as well as "second" and "third" pump in some of the others!
I've been "on the run" since the end of '92 in that time I have qualified to wear BA (breathing apparatus) drive the pump under non emergency conditions (requires a LGV licence, previously known as a HGV licence), and at the end of '97, I qualified to drive under emergency conditions (blue lights and sirens!) In early '98 I was promoted to Leading Fire fighter. (Poison Pearce eat your heart out!) On October 20th '98 I was interviewed for promotion to Sub Officer at the station, but was unsuccesful in the attempt.
In my time on the station, I have lead something of a charmed life. I have yet to come across too much injury, or death, but I have to accept that it will find me out some time.
The station handles an average of 300 calls per year, very few of these are to major fires. Most of the time we ride to AFAs (Automatic Fire Alarm) (or Another False Alarm) We get our fair share of car fires, and the occasional property fire.
We have a single pump, a water tender, with a 5000 litre a minute main pump. The chasis is a Volvo, with coach building by HCB Angus (sadly no longer trading)
The Names, (innocent or not the names have NOT been changed.) left to right, FF Pete Avery, now retired , SubO Tony Harris, now retired, FF Pete Williams, now retired, FF George Burton, Welephant, L/FF Pat Shotter, now retired, L/FF Ray Duell, now retired, Me, FF Richard Barnes, who is, yes you guessed it, now retired. I must get a more recent photo to put up here!.
Fire Calls are called Shouts, This goes back to the time, before electrically operated alarms, when people would run to where each fire fighter lived, or worked, to call them out, this involved a lot of shouting, hence the term shout!
This gave rise to my domain name. When I first joined the fire service, I lived just over one mile from the station, and the wrong side of a railway level crossing. Friends would laugh when I shot out the door, in response to the bleeper, only to return ten to fifteen minutes later, having missed the shout, muttering dark obscenities under my breath. It was said that I would eventually write my memoirs of my career in the fire service, under the pen name MR. SHOUT. The nick name was born.
There is a strong incentive to arrive at the station quickly. There are up to fourteen people who respond to the station (depending on availability) and the first six through the door ride the pump. The rest sign the sheet, to be paid for an "attendance", lock the doors, and cars, and tidy up the assortment of shoes clothes jumpers coats false teeth, wooden legs and other assorted detritus that inevitably gets thrown about in the rush to get the pump out on the road.
I grew so annoyed with missing calls that I moved house!
Embaresment During BA Training.
The training given has to be safe, but as realistic as possible, however there is always some element of "make believe" in the training. This gave rise to an embarrassing mistake for me during my Breathing Apparatus course.
We were given an exercise which consisted of a fire, and smoke logging, in a hostel, (actually the first floor of the training smoke chamber) I led a team, of three, into the job, to search for casualties. There were a number of casualties (dummies) to remove, and we were working in complete darkness and (synthetic) smoke. On one of the trips outside I noticed a child's doll had been rescued, I made a mental note of this, obliviously we were to find young children in the exercise. On the next trip in, we made our way, almost to the rear of the "premises" and I found a small soft " something". It had the weight of a small training dummy, as well as the approximate size, and I had big thick fire fighters gloves on. I passed the casualty down the team, and proceded to lead them out. We were almost at the door, when the following exchange took place.
Number three (carrying the casualty) "Number one".
Number one (me) " Yes number three".
Number three "This casualty".
Number one " Yes number three".
Number three " Its a pillow!!!".
It's not all beer and skittles, A mate, and myself, came very close to being badly injured on one of my very early shouts.
We had been called to a house fire, and one room of the property had been destroyed by fire. The house was in fact two flats, purpose built to look like houses. Part of the fire precautions that had been built into the flats consisted of a lining of reinforced concrete on the underside of the ceiling, attached to the ceiling joists. As we were in the job shovelling the debris out through the hole in the wall where the window had once been, a piece of concrete, about 2 feet wide, five feet long and 2 inches thick swung down between us on one reinforcement bar. It missed both of us by a matter of an inch! I looked at my mate and he looked at me, and we left that room pretty smartly!,