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Life on call to save lives
Fiona Scott-Wilson can barely walk past a beeping pedestrian crossing without springing into action.
If her pet lurcher hears a bleeping sound when he's out for a walk, he even turns around and heads straight for home.
She's lost count of the number of times she's leapt out of the bath at lightning speed or abandoned a trolley in supermarket to dash for the door.
As a retained firefighter Fiona constantly has an ear out for her pager – when it beeps, she has just five minutes to get to the fire station, get changed and jump on the engine, ready for action.
Retained crews provide vital back-up to full-time firefighters, joining them in tackling larger blazes and sometimes being the first engine on scene during busy spells.
Many retained staff juggle day jobs with on-call duties at the fire service, including Fiona who is a mum to Hope, 17, and a full-time community fire safety officer.
Concerns were recently raised by Lancashire chief fire officer Peter Holland that European proposals to stop people opting out from working more than 48 hours a week could impact on the retained service, who make up almost a third of Lancashire's 1,300-strong brigade.
Euro politicians have not finalised how the plans will affect the emergency services, but Mr Holland spoke out to stress how the county would struggle to cope if it could not employ retained staff at 32 of its 39 fire stations, including Bamber Bridge, Longridge and Garstang.
"Retained is a big commitment if you have another job, but it's a good commitment," Fiona, 44, says.
"Lancashire is quite big and has a lot of rural areas, many of them with retained fire units. The minimum you can be on-call for is 67 hours a week.
"If you could only be 10 hours on-call a week as a retained firefighter on top of your full-time job, we'd need hundreds more of them to cover the gap."
There would also be a financial impact on firefighters like Fiona, who signed up to the service when she was a single mum and could not find another job flexible enough to fit around childcare needs.
"For me, it would affect me because I have a mortgage and bills to pay and things that I have taken on the back of having this extra money," says Fiona, who lives in Chorley.
"If I'm no longer allowed to do retained work, then I'm going to be stretched."
For information on becoming a retained firefighter, contact your local station.
To read more about Fiona's firefighting exploits see Wednesday's LEP.
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Weather for Preston
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Light sleet
Temperature: 3 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 2 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South east
