by Nicholas Cole

Created on: September 18, 2008

Between 1980 1990 I was a retained fireman with the West Midlands Fire Service stationed at a two pump station in the Black Country, there was a full time pump and the retained pump giving evening and weekend cover. The hours for the retained crew were between 18.00hrs to 06.00hrs weekdays and 24-hour cover on Sundays, this may sound excessive and restricting but in fact it was not to bad. I will try to briefly explain how we were organised.

A British pump ladder fire engine has a minimum crew of four and a maximum of six, as a retained crew giving half cover we had seven crew members. This meant that if you needed time off for the odd night out during the week or vacations as long as there were four left covering it was not a problem, and this was something we organised between ourselves. We also had personal alerters so you weren't tied to the house all night you could go out, as long as you could get back to the station in three or four minutes.

To get to the main story one night the alerters went off at about 23.00hrs living the closest I was usually the first to arrive, I pulled on my kit and put the rest of the crews kit on the pump regardless of who turns up. As it happened that night we had a full complement. The obligatory driver, a Leading fireman, and four other crewmembers,
plus one poor sole that was going to have to stand down. We were off on the run in less than five minutes.

We were called to a well know washing machine manufactures; the building was well alight and the flames were through the roof when we arrived. There were ten pumps there in a matter of minutes plus the turntable ladder and the hydraulic platform also know as aerial appliances. We quickly got to work running out hose pouring as much water as we could into the heart of the fire. That's when we met our soon to be eighth member of the crew Dave "Doberman" Pincher. We had all noticed this chap running around in a panic dressed in an old fashioned looking uniform, the helmet was not like ours, his leggings were black not like our florescent yellow ones something was not right.
It was not unknown for oddballs to turn up at fires pretending to be firemen, in this case he was a fireman he belonged to the works fire brigade and was working the night shift doing his maintenance fitters job when the fire broke out. Some uncharitable people suggested he started it but I don't think that's true, but he was an oddball.

After about five hours the blaze was under control and damping down operations

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