I was walking past my local fire station recently which always looks a bit mysterious because of the darkened windows and there never being any visible activity inside. So it got me thinking, what are the people inside doing when they’re not heading out to fight fires?
The ones by me respond to car accidents too, so they help save people and work with the police and ambulance.
Posing for calendar photos
Training, physical and educational, eating, sleeping, responding to other calls (trees that pose a threat or obstruction, pets in need of rescue). Emergency simulations. Repairing and maintaing equipment, taking inventory. And of course admin. Reports etc.
They will maintain equipment, workout, make food, watch movies, kill time, sleep, etc
I’ve spent time with firefighters and paramedics. They can end up sitting around doing nothing for a significant portion of the day. This is the nature of emergency work. If you want someone to be instantly available the minute there’s an emergency, then you can’t really have them do anything else important. All they can do is work that can be dropped instantly (or do nothing). The same applies to any emergency service… emergency doctors, emergency plumbers, emergency locksmiths, emergency IT workers. Business managers hate this because no one likes the idea of paying someone who is not doing 100% work the whole time, but you just have to pay people to be available and do nothing else of major significance.
This is a big reason why I love my job lol. Of course you never know what kind of day you’re walking into. Some days can be crazy hectic and you don’t get a chance to yourself. But when it’s a slow shift, it feels like getting paid to do nothing. I love the crapshoot that that is. Though it’s not for everyone, I know plenty of people that hate the workflow/uncertainty aspect.
Business managers who don’t understand work flow and lead time properly. If they read The Theory of Constraints and understand the concepts they’d realize the important part is keeping the work/product moving even if that means an idle machine that just punches one hole all day, but necessary.
At my volunteer station, we all just go to work like normal and respond if there’s a call.
We do have some part time staff who remain at the station for EMS calls. When there’s down time they are:
- cleaning the station
- filling out charts from earlier calls
- checking all the apparatus equipment
- training skills
- homework from advanced classes (paramedic, rescue technician, officer, etc)
- napping to catch up on sleep from calls in the middle of the night
- doing station laundry
It’s enough to keep them lightly busy but not enough to be strenuous, as they typically do 12-24 hour shifts. Being “at work” for 24 hours is pretty rough, so I don’t begrudge them a mid-day nap.
Fires are only a small percentage of the calls most departments respond to. The majority is EMS, with various calls for some type of service making up the rest. As such, firefighters spend a lot of time in training for the various kinds of situations they’re called to. There’s also maintenance of equipment and gear, certifications, and in some cases, inspection of buildings for compliance. In my area, local departments have been funded to hand out smoke and CO detectors to homes that don’t have them, as well as change batteries.
Add to that eating, sleeping, and exercise. Firefighters go from 0 to 100% when the alarm sounds, and that can be taxing on the heart, so cardiovascular fitness is essential.
They do sustainment training on firefighting techniques and in my area they sometimes also respond to medical calls.
Not sure if you’re familiar with this masterpiece
Thank you. That was glorious. It had everything: tea and biscuits, adventure, porn, old ladies, porn, and underpaying firefighters.
It’s also clever that they called that shift “blue watch” lol
Buying groceries and cooking.
Once i found a website that used data published by a municipality to show graphs of what firefighters were doing.
Mostly it was responding to non-fire related calls. In some places if you dial any emergency services they all show up.
Of the fire calls, most were false alarms.
Community outreach. Showing why water on an oil fire is bad, fundraising at local events, how to properly put out small fires.
Pretty much every time I go to one of the local grocery stores I see a crew of firefighters roll up in their truck buying food.
They start their own fires so they can have a BBQ and then afterwards they can train by putting out their own fire.
I know of someone who studied and became a lawyer getting paid as a firefighter through school.
