What is the difference between On-Call and Wholetime firefighters?

Our crews work in two main ways:

• Wholetime firefighters are full-time employees who crew fire stations that provide immediate fire engine availability, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These stations operate on a continuous shift system, ensuring a fire engine can respond straight away.
• On-Call firefighters usually have other jobs or responsibilities and respond to the station when there is an emergency. When they are available, they are alerted by a mobile phone app and have up to ten minutes to reach the station and mobilise to an incident.

Because of this ten-minute mobilisation time, the nearest Wholetime fire engine will often arrive first at an incident, even when an On-Call station is closer.