Aylesbury Fire Station is looking to expand its firefighting team – and it’s keen to hear from you!

Did you know . . .

Aylesbury Fire Station is located in Stocklake. It is one of our shift crewed stations. This means it has four watches (Red, Green, White and Blue) whose members use the fire station as a base to provide full-time fire cover, 24/7 for Aylesbury and the surrounding villages.

Aylesbury also has an On-Call crew which can be called on to provide additional cover to Aylesbury, and its neighbouring areas, during incident response or when the day crew is busy.

What is an On-Call Firefighter?

On-Call Firefighters are professional firefighters and receive payment for the time they provide, responding to incidents, training and undertaking community safety activities, which include attending local events and helping people make their homes fire safe.

But unlike their shift colleagues, the Aylesbury On-Call crew usually respond from home or their primary employment on a call-by-call basis. They are local people who live, or work, in the Aylesbury area, and tend to have an enthusiasm for variety and action.

The On-Call crew are keen to help keep Aylesbury safe, either by using the skills and equipment they have been trained in to respond to emergency situations, by attending community events, or by sharing safety advice and tips with local groups.

If you’re interested, why not book onto our next On-Call Firefighter Awareness event. Taking place online on Wednesday 31 August 2022, you’ll be able to find out more about this firefighting role.

In the meantime . . .

Meet Gav:

Gav, 40, is one of your local Aylesbury On-Call Firefighters. He’s provided service to Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service for around 20 years and is someone you might have seen in the past delivering your mail. Up until 2019 he dual-rolled as an On-Call Firefighter and a local postal worker. His daily rural route saw him sorting and delivering letters on foot to the residents of Princes Risborough and the surrounding villages, Lacey Green, Speen and Saunderton.

What happens if someone gets taken ill when working at height? Well, it’s exactly the sort of unexpected situation our firefighters train for. If access is tricky, and special equipment is required, they are likely to be called out to assist our partner agencies and facilitate a safe rescue.

When it comes to precarious locations, the top of a crane is definitely up there – in this case 40 metres above ground! So when an offer is made for crews to practice their skills in a realistic environment, it’s an opportunity to good to be ignored!

Crew Commander Matt O’Sullivan from Beaconsfield White Watch shares his crew’s experience when they joined up with Amersham firefighters in Wooburn Green where construction company Stepnell have a tower crane in operation . . .

Training for the unexpected:

“It is always a treat for crews to get to train on structures in our local areas. Of course, most fire stations have drill towers on site which are designed and tested for this purpose, but from experience you just cannot beat getting out and practicing our skills on real-world structures every now and again.

It is all well and good training on a four-storey building with purpose-built anchor points, but what happens when you find yourself at the top of a 40-metre structure for the first time and must improvise a solid anchor point from what is available?

Of course, there is a lot of planning and paperwork to complete before such an event can take place, but it is well worth the effort to secure a good training session, and Stepnell’s crane operators were kind enough to work with us to allow this session to go ahead.

The aim of the day:

The purpose of the exercise was to familiarise two crews from Amersham and Beaconsfield with cranes, and for them to get to use the working at height equipment to perform a rescue from the top of the tower crane. Teamwork, a good plan, and excellent communication would be the keys to success.

Casualty lift:

The first crew used a 3:1 system to lift the casualty onto the jib.

The structure of the crane itself provided plenty of opportunities to create a good anchor point. The restricted room available made efficient use of the rescue hauler to get the job done more challenging than normal.

The rescue hauler must be pushed backwards and forwards to achieve the lift. If you can only push it half a metre along the line from your anchor, you are in for a long day! With a change of direction, using the length of the jib to their advantage, the crew set up a good system of work and were able to push the hauler at least three metres from their anchor point. This made the process of raising the casualty nice and efficient.

Once the first crew had raised the casualty safely onto the jib, they dismantled their working at height lifting system, re-stowed everything in the bag, and the two crews swapped over.

Casualty rescue:

The second crew now had a casualty on the jib ready for them to rescue. Once they had climbed up to the working area the crew went about setting up a safe lowering system using different anchor points from the first team. It was not long before our casualty, safely wrapped in a Chrysalis Stretcher, was being lowered back down to the ground.

Outcome:

The aims and objectives of this drill where both met.

The crews had a great familiarisation session on the crane and were able to successfully use our working at height equipment to raise and lower a casualty from the jib.

Thanks again to the Stepnell team for allowing us to have a good training session on their crane.”

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service (BFRS) has received an award from the Ministry of Defence for the work it is doing to support the Armed Forces community.

Last year BFRS signed the Armed Forces Covenant, which is its pledge to recognise the value serving personnel, reservists, veterans and military families can bring to the organisation.

It does this in a variety of ways, including supporting the employment of veterans of any age, and working with the Career Transition Pathway to advertise job opportunities.

Today (2 August) it was named as one of the 48 organisations in the South East to receive a silver award in the Ministry of Defence’s Employer Recognition Scheme.

Chief Fire Officer Jason Thelwell said: “Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service has always endeavoured to support those who have served, those who are currently serving, and all those connected with the Armed Forces. We strongly believe the experience they have gained provides key transferable knowledge, skills and disciplines that can be of huge value to us.”

As it now begins to work towards achieving gold status, BFRS will continue to:

• Promote the fact that it is an Armed Forces friendly organisation.
• Recognise relevant military qualifications in our recruitment/application processes.
• Offering a degree of flexibility in granting leave for Armed Forces spouses and partners.
• Support employees who choose to be members of the Reserve forces, by accommodating their training and deployment where possible.
• Offer support where possible to local cadet units, and encourage our staff to be cadet helpers or instructors.

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service is working with the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) as part of a national campaign encouraging people to become On-Call Firefighters.