Already the month of May is proving to be a hectic one for Suffolk's firefighters.
The unseasonably dry weather – we didn't even get April showers – has seen an unusually high number of grass / undergrowth fires in these last few days.
Over the weekend the Unimog from Lowestoft has been to two major grassland / heathland fires. The largest of the two was at Thorpeness Golf Club which escalated to Make Pumps 10 as the fire spread across approximately 100 acres of the golf course. The incident was eating up Suffolk's resources as crews were being relieved by pumps from all over the county.
The Unimog was used through at least three changes of crew which also meant that retained firefighters from Normanshurst were either standing by as a crew or making up numbers with the wholetime Watch.
In the last week we've had 10 shouts – almost unheard of these days. And the same can be said of other stations within Suffolk, some getting a month worth of shouts in just a few days.
And, with a fair few of these shouts coming in the middle of the night, most of us are hoping for a few quiet nights to catch up on our beauty sleep – and looking at our lot, they need quite a few quiet nights to catch up on their beauty sleep!
Comments
One response to “Suffolk’s firefighters have a busy few days…”
Ian, A couple of questions, i work out of a 2 pump station, 1 w/t, 1 ret, and things are pretty clear cut here, we man our pump the w/t man theirs, we don’t get called in to s/by if the 1st pumps out all day, we just respond on alerters when req’d, we don’t make up short falls on w/t manning, we do have dual contracts Ff’s (w/t & ret), the stn does around 800 shouts a year (ret approx 200). The things i’d like to know are, how many pumps do the retained man at your stn? Could you explain the call-signs you list on your shouts page (for your stn), as you seem to be able to have simultaneous shouts for the retained! Also, you mention on your blog that the cook feeds you after shouts! That would not happen here the watches all have there own messing, we eat at home or are fed on the fire-ground if req’d. Cheers Wayne