About the fire service and our staff

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Close up of Faisal Atcha a Station Manager who is sitting at a desk.

"Hello, my name is Faisal. I'm a station officer. I've been working for the Fire and Rescue Service now for about 17 years. I started as a firefighter. It's a unique career."

"You'll get involved in so many different things. One minute you could be sitting in a classroom looking at a new piece of equipment. Five minutes later you could be on a water rescue, shout, on a boat, going down the river and in the same afternoon, you could be doing a, a risk inspection of a large factory or talking to a group of vulnerable adults and fire safety. It's a uniform service."

"However, we like people to be themselves. You know, you are unique, and everyone is treated as an individual. You'll be working with some fantastic people, some of the nicest, kindest, and most helpful teams."

"You'll get to experience things you will never have a chance to do in any other job. at times you'll really have to push yourselves. But at every time, and at each step of the way, there'll be someone with you."

"So my advice to you is, you know, if you think it might not be for you like I did, give it a go. Find out a bit more and put your application in. Thank you."

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Close up of Ruth Price, a firefighter who is sitting next to an appliance.

“So I came from a different job where I was a primary school teacher for many years.

 I decided I wanted to change and it actually came from, had like a social event where one of my friends had a bit of an medical emergency and I found that all of my peers all sort of fell apart and couldn't cope with the situation, whereas I stayed calm. So that got me looking into the emergency services.

I thought I had a skill there that I should utilize and that could be sort of an avenue into a different job. Looking into the fire service and went to apply and actually it suits me down to a t sort of with things we do.

So responding to the community, helping people at their time of needs, and also an opportunity to keep on top of your fitness and use that as a way to help the public as well.

So on a whole time station, um, the day is fairly, we stick to quite a routine, um, which I really enjoy and it's like being part of a big family.

So we do station routines, sort of keeping maintenance on equipment, and stuff around the station. We then do fitness together always as a group as well.

We then do drills, so keeping on top of our competency and then we go out to the local community and do visits like a safe and well visit if it's smoke alarms or we go to schools and do talks around safety and fire safety.

We also go and find risks in our local area. In the middle of Oxford we've got quite a few risks in the colleges and big industrial buildings. So we'll go and sort of do assessments on those.

So the thing you can certainly keep on top of in the meantime is your fitness as that's a key part of the role.

You can then think about sort of hard skills and soft skills. So hard skills being the practical side of the job, doing the drills, using the equipment, keeping on top of your competencies. But then the soft side of the job is all that empathy and interacting with the public and working as part of a team.

So perhaps thinking about which of those you already have and which areas you can work on in order to be effective at the job.

Days are very busy with drills and practical training on station. Obviously responding to incidents and night times tend to be a little bit more theory based with learning.

We all sit together and have a big meal as a watch of 15. Have a bit of downtime together if it's not too busy out in the city.

We do two day shifts, two nights, and then we get a four off.

So you get that sort of four days of working, four days off pattern, which sometimes is great 'cause it'll lands on the weekends when other people are not at work as well.

And sometimes it lands in the middle of the week. And to be honest, that means you get those four days to yourself. Um, which is not a bad thing.

I've used that as an opportunity to have a go at some different challenges that I've wanted to do.

So we've got the blend and triathlon coming up this year. We have firefi competitions that around the country as well that sort of keep my hand in retraining.

Um, in my thirties in a different job entirely again, has reminded me that I'm able to, to learn a new, learn a new, um, yeah, learn a new job and carry on learning as an adult.

Yes, a real sense of worth as well.

I mean, it is best job of the world and to be able to be that person to respond to someone on their worst day is an absolute privilege."