Not impressed with firemens strike

[misdee]

leaving our area with no emergency cover as army green godesses wont cover.

is it worth putting lives at risk over station closures? will the closures mean risking more lives? what the heck is going on?

Hi misdee - there will be some cover but it isn't from the army. There will be engines manned by more senior officers who aren't striking so response times will be longer. The Green Goddesses have been scrapped as they were obsolete but the army do have access to engines, older ones that the fire service don't use anymore but which are obviously better equipped the the goddesses.

They'll be striking in your area to retain pumps at stations (probably the more rural areas)or to keep stations open. The Fire authorities feel able to reduce the cover by getting rid of these engines as they have changed the way they assess the risks. They used to measure by loss of life and property, now they only measure the risk to life so rural areas are at less risk. Also they have adjusted the response times - the guidelines now allow for longer response times. Jobs aren't going to be lost as such but there will be less firefighters on duty at any one time.

the changes that are being made are, in the opinion of the firefighter, going to reduce cover and make their job alot more difficult-
so the answer is yes, the changes forced on the fire service will probably lengthen response times etc and could potentially cause loss of life.
they are backed into a corner, the national strike was sabotaged by the press and so this is the usphot of that lack of support previously.

I haven't looked into this in any detail, but my gut feeling is behind the firefighters. They are the most effective emergency service in terms of turning up first – that's why fire engines carry defibrilators because ambulance services are so badly run they can't guarantee turning up in time to save someone's life. Seems at face value to be bloody stupid to take away appliances and shut stations – there was an RTA near Radlett recently which proved the point, I think. And I've seen politicians trying to justify crap pay by claiming firefighters all have second jobs so that's OK. Why on earth do they think firefighters have to take on second jobs?

Oh, and all this is going on in a county where not so long ago two firefighters were killed in a tower block in Stevenage (think Stevenage, could have been Watford). And yet they are taking ariel ladder platforms away...

Some of the appliances that turned up to the Buncefield fire are to be scrapped.

There are loads of other issues going on under the surface - shift changes, lack of manning resulting in difficulty taking time off, pension issues. Morale is at an all-time low. But this particular dispute is about safety and the bottom line is you will have less cover, further away than you've had before.

This situation is crazy, how long are these strikes meant to last? Our local station were on strike friday and had a sign out that said Buncefield heroes to zeros.

i really dont understand why they wont to close the 2 stations anyway.

yes 2 firefighters lost their lives in stevenage last year i think it was. and then buncefield happened. but they want to close stations? i am behind the firemen, but feel uneasy over a 48hour strike.