Northern Ireland Fire Brigade

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We visited Northern Ireland in July 2000. On our third day there, we drove to Ballymoney, home of the famous motorcycle racer who had just had a fatal crash the day before. We were in search of Joey's Pub which was being decorated with flowers and banners in his memory - but instead we came across a Northern Ireland Fire Brigade station, and of course we had to stop!

One of the firemen showed us around and explained much of their operation in great detail to me. In many ways I believe they are much more advanced than we are. Many of their policies and procedures are dictated by law as a result of one incident or another that resulted in firefighter casualties. For example, they have very stringent breathing apparatus training and policies as a result of the Manchester fire in which 40 firefighters died. Their SCBA are manufactured by Drager, a German company. The harnesses are fully padded, and though the unit probably weighs a bit more than ours, I found it MUCH more comfortable! There was even a protective padded cover that went over the bottle itself! Each SCBA had a log book attached to it in which they are required to write an entry after EVERY use of the unit, whether it be for training, a fire call, or whatever.

In their terminology, this station in Ballymoney is manned by "retained" (part-time) firefighters.

This board is used to track SCBA use at the fire scene. The officer puts each firefighter's ID tag in place, and logs their entry time, bottle pressure and task so that he can determine when the firefighter will need to be relieved. The next wave of the future for them is going to be computer chips in the units that will be able to transmit information to a control center about air consumption, etc.