I’m thinking about moving into the Fire Station…
I’ve spent the last three and half days there covering wholetime Watches away on a Water Rescue course and the half day on standby covering a Water Rescue shout! Being the mercenary, money-grabbing b**stard that I am, this will have gone some way to paying off my £551 gas bill that landed on my doormat on Monday morning!
On Monday there were three retained firefighters riding for Blue Watch – myself, John Hubbard and Jason Balls.
The morning was spent doing standard tests on Ladder 1, a lecture from Mark Frances on Stab-Fast, followed by getting our hands on the Stab-Fast out in the drill yard.
We had a couple of home fire safety checks in south Lowestoft booked in for the afternoon – a reasonably civilised way of spending the afternoon. And, as driver, I got to sit on the pump with the remainder of the crew while Mark and Jason did the visits.
Soon after finishing the second visit we were called up by Control to return to Normanshurst because a Water Rescue shout had come in. So we returned to Normanshurst on blue lights – a strange feeling as you’re normally going the other way on blues, not back to the fire station!
Steve Mullen, Crew Manager for Blue Watch, left me as driver for Ladder 1 as we headed off to Buss Creek in Southwold. It’s unusual for a retained firefighter to go out on a Water Rescue as we aren’t trained in this mystical art. However, I was staying ashore and would hopefully prove helpful for odd jobs.
Mel Buck and Al Soards followed us in the Unimog (now rechristened as Normanshurst Zero Mike instead of its original Zero Six). Our rendezvous point was originally Southwold Police Station but was changed just as we arrived to being Southwold Fire Station – no great deal as they are next door to each other…
Water Rescue had been requested by the Police to assist in the search for a missing local man, Daniel Hannant.
Within 15 minutes of our arrival we were joined by Princes Street 02 and 0V.
ADO John Tiffen had gone ahead to ascertain the areas that our teams were to search. When both teams were in their drysuits I took Ladder 1 followed by the Unimog onto the main road and parked up about 100m from the bridge over Buss Creek.
The boat was inflated and the teams split to search both ways from the bridge. I was left to look after Ladder 1 and the Unimog plus put back informative messages to Control.
After a couple of hours and with the light fading, the search was called off for the night.
All the gear was made up and we headed for home, getting back on station just before 1900hrs.
Tuesday saw the Water Rescue team out again in Southwold. I covered part of the day on standby at Normanshurst which spanned from just after 0900 till 1800hrs.
At around 1615hrs the Lowland Rescue team discovered a body. The Police sealed off the area to allow SOCO to do their work. When this was complete our Water Rescue team undertook the unpleasant but necessary task of retrieving the body from the marshes.
Having spoken to the team, they felt happy that they had been able to help in some small way to bring closure of sorts to the family of the deceased.
Hopefully the very close inter-agency work that was necessary on this tragic incident will mean that the Water Rescue capability of Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service will be called on more often, especially by the Police.
