North Wales Fire Service

According to their web site, the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service covers an area of approximately 2,400 square miles with a resident population of about 670,000. North Wales is divided into six counties. During the last few days of our one-week vacation to Wales, we stayed in Llandudno (pronounced something like "thlan-deed-no"), a coastal resort town on the northernmost tip of county Conwy. Conwy has six retained (part-time) stations and two day-crewed stations. Llandudno is one of the day-crewed stations, with firefighters on-site til 10p then on-call from home during the overnight hours.

Llandudno is a popular tourist destination, and boasts a large promenade that spans the length of the waterfront, which is lined from one end to the other with multi-story high-end hotels, shops and residences. To give some idea of the magnitude, the photo at right shows less than half of the waterfront (MUST get a wide-angle lens!) Seems that the emergency workers are quite busy in this town, there was not a single night that we were out and about when we did not see either the ambulance or the fire trucks rolling to a call.

Llandudno's district has a number of unique challenges - from wall-to-wall high-density structures, to a major rail line running straight through town, to a sizeable pier loaded with amusement park rides and other entertainment, to a cable car run - just to name a few! We walked to the fire station from our hotel on the evening of Thursday 5/8/08, and arrived just before 8p. The bay doors were open, but there was no one in sight so I rang the doorbell. Turns out we had unfortunately interrupted this firefighter's supper, but he shrugged off our apologies and spent a good deal of time with us, even going so far as to pull most of the trucks out of the station so that I could get pictures!