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Are You Still Busy?


Bgjm21

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Do people in city centre stations still find themselves quite busy? I know from direct family that working in the city center north of the border means you are in and out quite alot ( up here we still have 3 pumps to most AFA's for now), but I'm aware alot of brigades down south just dont attend or simply send one appliance to AFA's. What has been the knock on effects of this with regards to turnouts etc do you still find yourself in and out a lot in central area's or has it died a death with call filtering?

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Central London stations and a few of the others are still quite busy, not 80's busy, but certainly by modern standards. Some stations are back knocking on the door of 2000 a year as I'm sure @Steve will elaborate on the current numbers of his flagship to give you a more tailored idea.

We still attend AFA's (1 to commercial with 4 on a residential high rise) with call filtering but although fires are down, house fires are probably not. We have got rid of the malicious car/moped fires but still get a lot of residential work.

We are in quite a sustained busy period at the moment, our documentary should have ample footage to prove that, and they missed a whole range of meaty jobs over the new year. Add to that, fire deaths are on the rise in London, so the agenda on cuts is laid bare for all to see.

On a daily basis, I enjoy being busy though, going to 8 shouts in day that include a 6 pump fire and lunch at 1900hrs is what I joined for, despite being ruined at the end :-)

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18 minutes ago, Aspire said:

On a daily basis, I enjoy being busy though, going to 8 shouts in day that include a 6 pump fire and lunch at 1900hrs is what I joined for, despite being ruined at the end :-)

This is exactly what I want!

Hopefully get wholetime one day. 

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Those days in West Mids are over I am afraid.  I would say most of our stations, which are all whole time remember, are doing 100's of shouts a year, not the 1000's they once were.

My old station for example, Foleshill in Coventry, were doing around 3500 shouts a year when I went there in 2002.  When I left in 2011 it was around 1500 and now its down to around 1000.

A combination of our education of the public, the tearing down of notorious 'estates' that produced house fires every week, improved safety in cars, PDA reductions, 'call challenging', scrap metal prices fluctuating in recent years and other things means we are simply not as busy.

I see it in FI too.  We are one of only a few full time FI teams in the country and when I started in the team in 2011, we averaged around 25-30 shouts a month.  Now its probably 15-20.  I would however agree with Aspire that fatal fires haven't dropped in comparison and we still have around 25 fatal fires a year (this includes suicides and unlawful killings so doesn't reflect the 'preventable fire deaths' figure, which is obviously lower). 

The only thing that brings the figures anywhere close to where they were is adverse weather nowadays. 

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Im at one of the busiest stations in Herts and we can't compete with some of the numbers above! Our fire calls right across the County are on the up! Ive attended 7 today including an RTC, Horse stuck on a fence, garage fire AFA fire in the open a 3 hour Haz mat job (Decontamination Unit shout that I attended) Effecting entry, Not silly busy but enough to make the day pass!

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Im getting busier to be honest and not complaining neither. Luckily I am at one of the busiest stations in Manchester and cover a lot of ground which demographically has everything in it, including the M60, M61 and M62 as well as 120,000 population, with a lot of deprived areas, industry and chemicals. We also attend cardiac arrests which can be 3 a day, so that has increased turnouts.

Overall, Manchester is getting busier, with a few high profile jobs appearing within the news.

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How has co-responding affected wholetime stations? Have the LFB stations trialing it had a noticeable change in their number of mobilizations? Co-res is currently voluntary for our wholetime here so not all watches do it, but those that are consistently are certainly turning wheels more .

As a semi-rural retained station we normally got around 200 actual shouts (not including standbys) a year. We're at 140 now since January with probably half of those being co-res calls. Certainly has made us busier.

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Ive just looked at the stats for my station alone, and we have been mobilised to 62 incidents from the 1st May to 11th May and thats just in my station area. We cover many others if they are on Corporate Training etc, so that will more than likely be slightly higher. We don't do that may AFAs neither. I have a large hospital which is a regular but only a couple out of the 62 were to there, the rest were jobs of varying degrees.

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We had 74 for same period, again just our ground. We don't do co-responding either.

Our total to date for just our ground was 3082.

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We have just had our busiest year, but then having just merged services and new asset based mobilising means we are picking up a fair number of shouts where we didn't before, but on the flip side loosing out in other areas as well.

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Interesting to see that the majority of replies are reporting similar numbers. Also interesting to see that changes within services are making us busier which is what "they" have always wanted for years, so they can say we don't sit idle on station. Always annoyed me that one. I wish I could sit on station all day, might be able to catch up with all the generated paperwork :S

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I think there is an acceptance now (or there is in LFB) that we probably 'bottomed out' with fatal fires, low call numbers etc. It took extra-ordinary effort and was politically driven by the last regime in London. Literally, cook the books to make yourself quieter so we can cut.

That chicken is nor coming home to roost. The high call numbers caused by shit in lifts, AFA's rubbish and car fires have gone. But property fires as well as fatalities are creeping up again.

What has been very clear since the cuts are we no longer arrive so quickly so the number of make-up jobs has increased making us as senior officers busier? Anything 6 pumps and above, should attract a 'performance review of command' with an independent chair (usually the local BC) the IC's and Monitoring officer as well as someone from our Ops review team. We are so far behind with ORT, Chair's and other Officers trying to fit them all in, we are now not holding them if "there is no significant learning" (significant being the operative word as there is always learning.

Fires confined to room of origin seem to be a smaller percentage of the overall figure now, which seems to indicate they are growing before we get there. Closures have inevitably made some of the neighbouring stations busier as I’ve seen in my Borough, but the two 2 pump station in the borough, although much quieter than they were a couple of decades ago, with little crap, still seem to pick up decent BA jobs every couple of days across the watches.

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Last 3 days, 85 incidents (Fri 12 May 2017 21:40:01)

Primary Fire 13         
Secondary or Chimney Fire 24              
Special Service 22             
Road Traffic Collision   
Emergency First Responder 17           
Falls Team 6

They are the stats for Humberside on the public incident feed.  EFR(CoRo) has dropped recently was 10 to 15 a day not sure what is going on there, Falls (nan down's) are up and down as its crewed by volunteers and they are struggling with that.  

Primary and secondary are both up massively compared to what they have been over the last year or so, this is only 3 days for 30 stations.  

There are a small minority of stations where 80%+ of their work is CoRo just due to their locations.

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5 hours ago, Steve said:

Fires confined to room of origin seem to be a smaller percentage of the overall figure now, which seems to indicate they are growing before we get there. 

A good point Steve and something which inevitably is going to create a bigger risk to both anyone in the property or to the responding crews. The old description of a flashover springs to mind here, "a flashover occurs when a fire in the room becomes a room on fire". 

With either delays in attendance time or with two pumps responding from one pump stations rather than a pair from the same station, something for example like a bedroom fire which previously could have been dealt with by a single BA crew probably with a hosereel, albeit with everything in place, will either be at the flashover stage or will have already flashed meaning we are dealing with a much bigger fire requiring a different response and ultimately more damage to the property.

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Agreed^^ As already stated, we are now attending fires later and with less people. (If you remember the "flashover"graph) we would usually intercept at the lower end of the growth phase, we are now making our attack at the top of or past that top part of the curve! .....bigger fires= more risk + more damage. 

This is also where some of the policy makers are taking us with reference to the smaller vehicle types. They are stating that the smaller vehicle can make better progress through the streets much quicker than a standard "type B" and with fewer people in them (RDS crewing availability springs to mind, only waiting for 2 rather than 4+) and we can make that earlier intervention with UHPL or fog spikes without committing inside while the cavalry eventually get there!

Bottom line are...calls are on the up, fire deaths are on the up, firefighter safety on the decline.......

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We don't attend the majority of Afa's anymore, but are attending way more medical related, one of our stations that was due for closure has had a reprieve by the co responding jobs sending it from the quietest station to the busiest ! - oh and doing lots of over the border shouts for lfb ?

most stations if they are doing the medical shouts have a had a significant rise in call numbers which could go some way to protecting them from any cuts .

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That's the thing, some LFB Ff's are apprehensive about the whole co responding thing but in terms of station closures I see it as a positive.  A shout is a shout whether it be a fire or a cardiac arrest.

Yes some of us with a few years under our belts didn't sign up for co responding but when all is said and done I'd rather have it than have my fire station closed down.

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True, I didn't sign up for it and to be honest I would rather not do it, but we have been for 18 months. Unfortunately, I along with 6 on my watch live in our station area and are turning out to people we know. Without going into too much detail, my watch alone have turned out to family members, 2 in fact that have resulted in fatalities. Now I know we run the risk of the at every incident, whether it be an RTC or a fire involving, but we are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

As a WM, I have to ask the watch if they are OK to attend cardiac arrests. Now, given the above, we struggle to say no, because, if we did, we would have issues if we later found out that a friend or a family member had died because an ambulance took 10 mins, knowing that perhaps we could have attended and early intervention could have had a positive impact, so we say yes.

I would contest anyone who lived and worked in their own area to refuse to attend cardiac arrests knowing full well it could be a relative, friend, friend of a friend, relative of a friend or anyone you know, whose life could have been saved if someone stuck a defibrillator on them minutes earlier. Its hard call to make. 

Its not the answer by the way, and as I said initially, I don't think we should be doing them, but apart from the keeping of pumps, bear in mind the moral parts also.

This probably belong in the cardiac arrest thread, sorry :$

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On 12/05/2017 at 21:54, Matt said:

Last 3 days, 85 incidents (Fri 12 May 2017 21:40:01)

Primary Fire 13         
Secondary or Chimney Fire 24              
Special Service 22             
Road Traffic Collision   
Emergency First Responder 17           
Falls Team 6

They are the stats for Humberside on the public incident feed.  EFR(CoRo) has dropped recently was 10 to 15 a day not sure what is going on there, Falls (nan down's) are up and down as its crewed by volunteers and they are struggling with that.  

Primary and secondary are both up massively compared to what they have been over the last year or so, this is only 3 days for 30 stations.  

There are a small minority of stations where 80%+ of their work is CoRo just due to their locations.

This is why the FRS need to take on new skills. It's fine looking at the likes of Glasgow, Manchester & London, but for a whole Briagde that is breathtaking and politicians will be licking their lips with hard pressed ambulance services across the UK needing more funds. OK it was a Saturday night, but LFB hit 85 calls for today at 04:38 this morning. Jesus single stations used to do this in a week years ago. I daresay you could have included Hull Central in among that figure once upon a time.

I don't think CoRo is ideal and I really wouldn't have wanted to do it like Carl stated. I can't really offer an opinion on it because I'll never have to do it (save for coming across one God forbid). But with figures like 85 calls in three days for one WHOLE Brigade, less than three calls per station but probably worse as I imagine the stations in Hull suck a lot of that 85 up. It really does mean something else has to be taken on or a wholesale review of the UK Fire service as no one can justify that levle of inactivity and although I personally believe it important, no one in politics today is going to come up for the "They are an insurance policy" argument.

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Exactly and CoRo around Humberside has kept stations open.  There will be another 50 jobs on top of that but they will be the AFA, FAM that they never report on.  

As of 10 minutes ago the figures are practically the same but in that there have been a handful of make ups too.  Easily Central could have been included in that, 2 pumps on the go all night, now its 1 pump tucked away and they might get 2 jobs if nothing like RTC or PR comes in.  Around here Scunthorpe, Hull and Grimsby used to be in and out all night now its nothing, the RDS are busier in some areas.

Only a small percentage of FRS is ever used and they have the capacity to pick the CoRo stuff up and keep stations open, some areas it is a life saver as you can easily be an hour from an ambulance so they are located rightly and the crews got a choice in it some do it some don't.  You need to have that resource there if it does happen, most don't see that as financially viable but will moan when it all goes wrong.  

Only got to have another Nypro or Oil Refinery going bang big time and you loose a big chunk of the attendance and then with cuts further afield it will be a mess.

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Sorry, I don't buy the "CoRo is keeping stations open" line. In the time we've taken on CoRo, we've seen the largest amount of station closures and job losses.

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Right, as an idea, Euston's pump ladder A231 did 2882 calls in the last 12 months. A236 took 451, total 3333 (:/ weird) that's at time of typing 11 am. And no Co-Ro...

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