Interesting Fire Department stuff.

[Jimbuna]

Interesting footage

Sadly, here in the UK the current trend is to close stations and downsize manpower and equipment wherever possible...madness in the name of austerity.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Interesting footage

Sadly, here in the UK the current trend is to close stations and downsize manpower and equipment wherever possible...madness in the name of austerity.

That's the same everywhere.

But... With 80% of the calls being EMS (Medical) only calls, and 90% of the rest having an EMS element to it, and the general improvement of fire prevention in occupied buildings, the need for pure Fire coverage has declined over the recent past.

AND with the improved procedures, techniques, and devices/drugs available to EMS crews today, the pre-hospital care provided in the field (I am only familiar with US systems) has increased by leaps and bounds over the past 15 years. For two main reasons: 1) Education of both the responders and the medical doctors overseeing them, allowing for more aggressive approaches 2) Trauma resuscitation research has vastly improved since 2001, when the Afghan and Iraq wars started. The military trauma service has always been a testing ground for new procedures. That's why the survival rates are so much higher (and with it, more disfigured dismembered returning servicemen) than they were in past wars. The medical learning curve in the battlefield (system wide) is very quick to respond to changes. So the EMS crews in the field can provide better care over longer periods of time, negating the need for more units closer to hospitals.

All that means, we generally now need less responders to cover more population.

Of course, there are a lot of blockhead city councils that cut coverage based soley on budget reasons, and that's not good.