Are You Still Busy?

[Steve]

2 hours ago, Ian said:

Are you the busiest in London?

Yes & No,

Total station calls numbers, that's the mighty (or so they say) Soho.... Bane of Cashy's life.

But to be fair that is the pair and the TL that keep them lively. The single busiest appliance, is when I last looked, Euston's PL, followed by Soho's Pump or Shoreditch's PL.... the two of them seemingly often battling out between 2nd and 3rd.

Because he's been at it so long in one place, I'd also argue that Cashy has over the past decade been the busiest WM in LFB.....

it shows....

Not like me and Firestorm who barely look past our 20's.

[Cashybai]

I'll go with that Steve, the avatar is me letting my hair down... Its been a three way fight between Soho's pump, Us and your very own PL for a long while now. But since Soho's pump is often the take truck on Shoreditch and my turf, I'll let them have their moment...

It's interesting reading previous posts, Lift calls are definitely down in comparison to how they were when I started here , AFA's are marginally less, however as others have said, reduction in PDA numbers has made a difference. What is noticeable is the amount of small fires is up, the number of car and moped fires has dropped, but I've always said that tallies with scrap prices.. But we are starting to get more compartments fully involved , and we're going further to said calls in terms of travel distances...

[Dyson]

So, this conversation gets churned out around every mess room table on every watch regularly, ya know "when we used to go to fires" "calls have dropped through the floor" "CFS is doin us out of a job" blah blah blah.....

Im only gonna deal with whats real, not made up anxieties and people talking about things that are not real.

So whats real? my reality.....

Are building fires down? no, not in my world. i joined in the busy 90's working in the north and the east end of London. I'm going to more building fires now than i was then. this is the reality. still doin houses and flats all the time, we now get more commercial and industrial.

Are turnouts down? yes, they are. call challenging by control, fewer lift jobs, fewer cars and rubbish, but that type of job comes and goes dependent on location, demographics and other factors.

Are AFA's down? yes they are, massively. we only really go to residential and life risk, like hospitals. good, i don't want to be charging around town to nothings.

Is anything up? yes! RTC's, Animal jobs, Water rescue etc....we now do this stuff professionally, and not heath robinson stylee...

So the 90's saw a surge in call numbers perhaps, but not jobs, in my experience. We are still busier now than prior to that surge by the way!

Its your choice, you can catastrophise all your like guys, "the jobs gone to the dogs, its changed, not the job i joined when we used to get fires " or we can all man up, look at the reality of whats actually happening, and embrace the future with smiles on our faces and chin held high.

Lets embrace the work coming our way, taking up the shortfalls in the ambulance service, but lets to it properly, and by that i mean following something similar to the US model. not this half arsed stuff....

[Noddy]

^^^ And the reality here is very different.  Not that I feel the need to 'man up' any greater than I am already , but I also was around in the 90's and we must be unique to the rest of you folks cos we ain't doing the work we were. 

[Dyson]

Didn't mean you specifically @Noddy, no more than that i meant myself and the rest of us who sit around the table chuntering about stuff 

[Noddy]

I know mate hence the 

 

[Percy]

On 11/05/2017 at 13:29, OscarTango said:

How has co-responding affected wholetime stations?

Some stations here have more than doubled their calls and the service has attended around 5500 since the trial started.

Staines is the busiest Co Responding station in the country and even this station is permanently shared with the Ambulance service too so gives an idea of the demographic and level of activity on its ground.

[Matt]

There are retained stations up here that have done less than 50 none CoRo calls this year (since January) and are topping 300 CoRo jobs!  There are 5 stations that have a similar pattern just different numbers but if it wasn't for the CoRo they would hardly be doing anything.

[Steve]

Its possible this years trend in LFB of a rise in serious fires, may be just 'one of those years' but I think a decade plus after de-regualtion of FS, continued cuts to the service  and massive demographic changes in the Capital are now beginning to come home to roost. There is no rhyme nor reason behind the increase in serious fires, this year in particular, as they are occuring all over London in multiple property types with multiple reasons on the accidental/deliberate scale. As it is I think we pretty much accept now that Fire deaths bottomed out a couple of years ago and will creep up now. I may be wrong, but I'd say wtahc this space and when CoRo goes live across LFB, the Brigade will find itself in new very lively territory.