Plea for more part-time firefighters (From The Northern Echo)

Plea for more part-time firefighters

1:47pm Tuesday 21st February 2012 in Thirsk News

AN MP joined forces with part-time firefighters to make a plea for more people to join the ranks of the 999 life-savers.

Skipton and Ripon’s Tory MP Julian Smith visited Masham's on-call firefighters on one of their regular training exercises.

And he highlighted the commitment given to the community by the crew who all work as on-call firefighters in addition to their regular jobs.

"The majority of the fire stations in my constituency are staffed by retained firefighters who are on-call throughout day and night and give a huge commitment of hours to protecting their community,” he said.

"The men and women in these roles have to be trained as thoroughly as full-time crews but most have other full-time jobs as well.”

He added: "The fire service in North Yorkshire always would like more people for these roles and I promised to do all I could to help spread the message and, in particular, encourage employers to be supportive of those interesting in signing up."

Fire service spokesman Mal Austwick added: "Our on-call firefighters are an essential part of providing an emergency service to the community. They provide amazing commitment on top of their full-time employment to support the operational side of the service.

"Those who join the fire service can have a fulfilling and rewarding career in providing emergency fire and rescue cover to their local communities and beyond.

“We have some on-call firefighters who have worked for the service for over 30 years which is a fantastic achievement."

Information and an application pack on becoming an on-call fire fighter can be found on the website northyorksfire.gov.uk