As a nation, we are learning to accept that our firemen are more and more redundant. The Fire Brigades Union fights austerity at every turn; its spokesmen say that every reduction in station numbers or jobs is a threat to public safety. One of their campaign posters even showed David Cameron and George Osborne alongside the words, ‘They slash. You burn.’
But the statistics undermine the union’s manipulative language of doom. The cuts have been matched by a continuing decline in dangerous fires. According to figures released at the end of last month, the fire brigades attended 495,000 incidents in the year 2014–15, a decrease of 42 per cent compared with ten years ago. But of these incidents, only 31 per cent were actual fires: 44 per cent were false alarms, with other operations like floods, road traffic and animal rescue making up the rest. In 2014–15 there were 258 fire deaths in England, 16 fewer than in the previous year and 30 per cent lower than ten years ago.
It is now clear that a heavily staffed fire service is an anachronism, so things will have to change radically. One unorthodox proposal just put forward by the Local Government Association was that underemployed firefighters should become quasi-social workers. Among the roles envisaged for this new breed of hose-and-care operatives are running courses to encourage overweight children to become fitter, checking families for signs of domestic abuse, and ‘helping babies and toddlers sleep safely by distributing cots and Moses baskets’.
There is a far more sensible solution. Instead of half-baked social workers, firefighters should become fully fledged paramedics, helping to relieve the tremendous, growing pressures that the ambulance service is facing. The brigades should merge with ambulance crews to create a proper, effective emergency and rescue service.
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