[Closed] Retained Firefighters- anyone do it?

I know a few who've done it. In order to give them the hours that they require from you, you need to be very committed to staying within the proximity to station required. If you currently work full time then expect pretty much all of your "spare" time to be given over to the fire service. How fast can you sprint in your PJs?

If you currently work full time then expect pretty much all of your “spare” time to be given over to the fire service.

That's not the case here. I work in a large pharma site, and am part of the Emergency response team, a couple of our guys are RFF and don't do much hours at all, it's all about the amount of hours they are 'available', which is very different.

And our local fire station is one of the busiest around, so not exactly sleepy hollow.

I love the fire training we do with ERT - heading up to Glasgow airport to do our training day on their fuselage rig, it's brilliant.

Mate does it, he lives round the corner from the village fire station which is obviously handy. He's also a full-time fireman elsewhere. Seems to have a lot of time off 😂

full-timer here (dont like the word wholetime, is it only fire that say this?) with a retained background.

as per qwertys post in our brigade, not enough numbers so more pressure to stay on call. not family friendly at all but its a rewarding job helping people and learning new skills.

the dynamics of each particular station will be different, ideally a close-knit friendly watch.
id expect 2 or 3 hours of training one evening per week, the odd day at the weekend training too, then shouts on top of that, obviously through the night too. some people like a busier station (out a lot), some prefer a quieter one (more time at home).

id definitely recommend it, may be the best thing youve ever done. if you dont like it then just pack it in, although thats one of the problems in our county, retaining the er...retained.
if theres plenty of bods on station, youll get more time off call, less pressure from family, win/win.
if tight for numbers then maybe youll be under a bit of pressure to do more cover, and pressure from wife to do less.

And you have to be very close, I'm 8 mins drive from my local FS, it's a 6 min maximum. Some stations have different requirements too, ie they may not need folk that work 9-5, as they're well covered for evenings and weekends.

I know of one small downtrodden town fire crew that just can't get RFF for during the day, as anyone sensible in town has a job, it's only the nitwits that are about during the day.

I've been on call for the past couple of years, I'm fortunate that my primary employment let me leave during the day when I get a shout.

My station is an on call only station with one pump and we are reasonably busy, there are stations nearby where there are two pumps, one wholetime and one on call. The wholetime crew take all the shouts and the on call will only get sent out if it is a big job (needs more than 1 pump) or the wholetime are already out. They struggle to keep on call firefighters at those stations because they quite quickly get fed up of having no shouts. If there is a station you are looking at you might be able to see how many times they get called out each year, sometimes they publish that information online.

The amount of hours they will want from you will depend on what sort of cover they have at the moment, if someone came to us saying they could cover during the day then we would take them on even if they only offered 3 days a week. If someone offered every week night we probably wouldn't because we have more people than we need overnight.

Echo what sadexpunk said about dynamics, every station will be different but on the whole there is normally plenty of banter.

Overall it's probably the best job I have ever done and although we get paid for it, I think most firefighters at my station would do it for free.