Airport Firemen

[slimjim]

What do they do all day? I'm sure if a real emergency occurred, they would do a grand job. But we don't get many of those. Apart from cleaning, training and showing excited school kids around, what do they do? It must be pretty boring.

[boognish76]

Probably the same thing that normal firemen do - play volley ball and watch porn. Seriously, there's a LOT going on at an airport and the variety of things that can go wrong and the high level of preparedness needed for any given situation probably means that training and education takes up a large proportion of their time.

[brawburd]

and I think you would be surprised by just how often they are called out. Not for major disasters of course, but for a multitude of less critical reasons which we passengers are unaware of (according to my friend who is an airport fireman!).

[paulz]

They're also trained paramedics and attend for resus etc, not to mention freeing folk stuck in lifts, checking up on fire alarms that go of etc ...

[smudge]

They can't be that overworked, as most of the firemen I know (& I do know a few) have second jobs! Also two of them retired at an extremely early age - due to accidents at work. One is physically doing up his house to sell, then moving to Spain. The other teaching Scuba Diving as a 'hobby'. You may laugh, but this is all out of our pockets!

[smudge]

P.S. This is not sour grapes, just frustrates me at how easy it is for them to be signed off work for good due to accidents, then to see them laughing up their sleeves that they've got away with it, all at our expense!

[Will423]

A firefighter HAS to be at 100% fitness and health. Even the slightest injury can put him off work. I cut my hand at an incident and was not allowed on duty as long as I was bandaged up.