Meet our Fire Control Operators

Hi. I'm a Watch Manager with Michelle Caswell.

I have now been in the fire service for 17 years.

I started as a firefighter Control and worked my way up the ranks to Watch Manager.

My name's Laura, Crew Manager on Green Watch.

I started in the job 15 years ago in three months' time.

Like Michelle, I started out as a control operator and worked my way up the ranks.

Did a six month stint as temporary Watch Manager last year,

but I've reverted back to my substantive role as Crew Manager.

Absolutely love the job. Wouldn't want to do anything else.

My name is Nicole, I just joined in Control as a firefighter in January,

I did a three week training course and then I first went on shift at the beginning of February.

So now I'm working towards my three monthly assessment.

So I joined the five service

because my partner is in the fire service and he used to come home and talk about his experiences.

I knew I didn't want to join as a firefighter.

I always had more of a, sort of experience working on telephones and speaking to people directly,

and I thought, that's the way I can, get into the fire service

and take fire calls and be able to speak to the public and be able to help them as well.

Yes, similar to Michelle. I've always liked talking to people and trying to help people if I can.

It's different providing the service that we do speaking to somebody

rather than the operational firefighters that are,

there physically helping somebody, where quite often the first

voice that person hears in an emergency situation

and for you to be able to be that calming voice on the end of the phone gives you a

lot of job satisfaction at the end of the day.

I wanted to join the fire service.

I'd always had a passion to help the community through the 999 line.

And I think having family members in the fire service

and seeing what they do to help the community and emergencies in sort of in awe of that.

So I’ve always wanted to help through the 999 line help the community in an emergency.

Yeah. So I'd say if you looking into join Control,

come and speak to us, find out how we work and what goes on.

It can be a really rewarding job, especially speaking to people at the end of a telephone,

and then known you've helped them, known you've got a fire engine to them or whatever it is they need.

But at the end of the day, you go home after a shift thinking you've done a good job

and you've you've done the best you can.

You've helped people, helped the community. Same,

if you fancy it, come in and have a look,

you know, all the watches are open to people coming in for visits,

just sitting with one of the operators even one of the officers and just having a general overview of what happens day to day.

And I think just getting that initial look that the mobilising system

will give you a good overview

of whether or not you think it might be the right job for you.

When I was thinking about coming into this career,

all I did was came in and sat on watch for a day just to see exactly what happens,

what goes on, looking at the system and how everything works day to day.

And you know, it was something that I really wanted to do,

and going into training, it's all broken down

so go through and it's it's not as scary as what it looks when you first come in.

It’s easy.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.