One more last working class hero

firefighters’ priorities mostly focus on preparing for this probability. Even on the quietest of stations, such as Biggin
Hill with less than 200 ‘shouts’ a year, the appliance will always be ready with doors open and ‘firegear’ laid out on the
seats to facilitate ‘rigging’. There is no room for leaving equipment behind, everything, including the firefighter must
always be ready for action 51 . Adrenaline levels are likely to rise, even en route, because firefighters will more likely only
know that they are going to a fire, the rest is left to the imagination. As one firefighter explained, “we only come back
from false alarms, we never go to them” and this suggestion relates to any call that firefighters receive, they are all
emergencies until proven otherwise when they arrive. Driving to a fire is in itself an adrenaline-raising experience.
Drivers can take advantage of the knowledge that other traffic will not deliberately hinder them and apart from the call to
duty, the ability to have an adrenaline-raising drive encourages firefighters to treat all calls with equal urgency. It appears
that firefighters spend on average 12.5 minutes at each call 52 and whilst false alarms clearly skew this statistic, it is true
that many fires do not take very long to extinguish. What most members of the public are unaware of is that firefighters
really enjoy firefighting. As an example of this and their sense of duty, it is true to say that the short time firefighters
remain at an incident is only made possible, because once they extinguish a fire, firefighters do not then stretch out the
job. They hurry to become available (‘on the run’) in case there is another incident 53 . However, if firefighters wanted to
they might extend the time spent at each fire by up to 3 or 4 hours 54 .
1.7.3. How many calls?
This report is not about the LFB, but because this brigade attends a wide spectrum of emergency calls I have used it as an
example for this statistical part of the analysis. The considerable statistical evidence the LFB provide suggests some
examples of how busy firefighters might actually be and the type of emergencies they attend (see Appendix 6). From this
Appendix (Figure 1), it is possible to suggest that in the financial year 1999/00, the 112 LFB stations attended 174,564
emergency calls. Figure 2 indicates that 77 people died in fires and 239 were rescued 55 . Figure 3 is the result of my using
SPSS to select stations at five percentile points over a period of four financial years. In the year, 1999/2000 it can be
ascertained that:
• the busiest station is Soho (percentile point 100), which attended a total of 3954 emergency calls in their area;
• the quietest station is Biggin Hill (percentile point 1), which attended 166 emergency calls in their area.
Figure 3 also provides statistics to generalise how many calls a firefighter on one of the four watches at the percentile
stations might attend. Thus, in the year 1999/2000 a firefighter stationed at:
• Soho attended 988 emergency calls in their stations area;
• Biggin Hill attended 41 emergency calls in their stations area.
Figure 4 involves a similar use of SPSS for fires in properties (primary fires) and from this it can be ascertained that in the
year 1999/2000:
• the busiest station, Tottenham (percentile point 100), attended a total of 431 fires in buildings in their station’s
area and a firefighter on one of the four watches might attend on average 2 fires a week;
• the quietest station, Biggin Hill (percentile point 1), attended 50 fires in buildings in their station’s area and a
firefighter on one of the four watches might, on average, attend 12 fires a year .
Figure 5 represents a breakdown for the total calls for the percentile stations, including makeups. Figure 6 is a total of the
makeups the LFB attended in four financial years. Figure 7 breaks these statistics down station by station for the year
1998/1999 and this indicates that:
• there were 581 makeups
• Biggin Hill had no makeups;
• Soho had 11 four-pump fires;
• Tottenham had 10 four-pump fires;
• no makeup resembles the size of the Kings Cross disaster (Fennell 1988).
I provide these statistics to make the point that contrary to popular belief firefighters are not always firefighting 56 , indeed
and as later evidence will verify firefighters have a considerable time free from firefighting to organise their informal
hierarchies.
13
51 This can make toileting difficult.
52 A fire service statistician whose name will not be revealed supplied this statistic.
53 Firefighters, unlike other workers (see Collinson 1992: 14), do not require production bonuses to work harder at what they identify as ‘The Job’.
However as Chapters 3-5 will show they resist carrying out ‘other’ work, which they do not relate to their operational duties, such as FP, or what they
call unnecessary drills; they impose what might be seen as unofficial embarkation lines. Chapters 3 and 4 will explain that firefighters do not only work
for wages, they also gain other dividends from their employment.
54 Once a fire is over the speed at which firefighters work does not materially slow down. They are quick to collect up their equipment, tidy up and to
then radio control that they are available for other fires. Firefighters have not yet resorted to a form of soldiering that would see them staying at an
incident longer than necessary and thus increasing the need for extra reserves of firefighters to cover any other incidents that occurred. It is surprising
that firefighters have not yet used this form of action as a warning of what might occur if further cuts in the fire service were to take place.
55 In 31 year’s working as a firefighter in a ‘busy’ area of London, I was present at about 16 rescues.
56 Cunningham (1971) suggests only 3% of firefighters’ time is spent firefighting.