London Firefighter

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The Brigade now employs 425 women in operational roles at various ranks– out of a total of 4, 545 operational staff. Early in her firefighting career, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton was on a shift, rushing towards an emergency call. A crew member had been badly injured. Her partner, Mike, was a member of the four-man team. Was he hurt? Was he alive? For the next four minutes and 37 seconds she tried to retain her composure. At the scene, she found that the injured firefighter wasn’t Mike (now her husband). The wave of relief that washed over her was followed immediately by another – of guilt, having felt relief at another colleague’s ill fortune. That second wave changed the course of her life. The facts are that the Grenfell Tower fire was all but extinguished when he arrived and the scene was relatively safe when he made his first entry.

The Brigade is committed to increasing the number of female firefighters on its roll and busting myths that firefighting is not a job just for men. Edric is a former London Firefighter serving in a number of different stations over thirteen years. In his book ‘Into The Fire’ we read about some of the tragedies that Edric has attended over the years and with some slightly light-hearted tales. As she had made her way to west London, Cotton, 48, had been listening to her brigade radio, which was transmitting messages between the control room and the fire ground, trying to form a picture of what awaited her. When she saw the blazing tower, any hope she had that loss of life would be avoided was extinguished.I especially enjoyed the author’s recollection of a heroic episode on honeymoon in Gran Canaria, where he took it upon himself to help out the local bomberos to stave off a blaze, prioritising the health and safety of others even in the midst of enjoying an idyllic time on holiday with his new wife. I remember it sometimes being very odd for me because I would be in the yard doing a training exercise and I would happen to look around briefly and there would be all these other firefighters – who had come to do training on other things – who had come out to the yard to watch. They were watching me because I was woman. If it is something you’re interested in and you think you would be good at it, then go for it.” Modern Day Firefighting Just from hearing the initial messages, I wanted to get on the road and get there as soon as possible. I live in Kent, a fair old way away. I took the details, got a postcode, got in my car and drove on a blue light (which allowed her to drive at speed to the fire).

The building had been a death-trap for the initial attending crews but was relatively safe and the fire was out by 10:30. Sue later moved to Old Kent Road Fire Station, where she was based for eight years. Similar to a modern day firefighter, she attended a multitude of incidents across London, from fires to people shut In lifts and road traffic accidents. She attended the Bishopsgate bombing in 1993, where she was based in the control unit. in 1993 she moved to Avon Fire and Rescue Service, where she served for 14 years before she retired. As Dave opened the nozzle we were engulfed in steam as the water cooled the superheated atmosphere above us. I buried my head a little lower and held on for dear life as Dave worked the jet around the large hallway, extinguishing the burning contents. One small place to start could be renaming Fireman Sam. Her daughter, who would like to be an astronaut firefighter, putting out fires in space, used to rail at the TV, “It’s not fireman, it’s firefighter!” I’d guess she heard that from someone else. “I 100% think it should be Firefighter Sam. Language makes a difference,” she says. Cotton had gone into the tower to gain an understanding of the nightmare confronting her colleagues. “I could see the conditions when we went in, the severity of the fire. The debris was raining down on us. I knew I was committing them to an extreme situation, and in those situations things aren’t always predictable and that was very frightening.”I am that old that I actually chose the career of a ‘fireman’. Today’s term reflects the changing face of the service and its drive to secure ever more women into its ranks. But regardless of which label you use the ‘job’ had (and still retains) qualities which were exciting, demanding and extremely rewarding. Cohen-Hatton has overcome substantial adversity to reach a position of seniority in the fire service, and The Heat of the Moment is also a memoir. Her father died when she was nine – the same age as her own daughter, Gabriella, is now. As a teenager in Newport, south-east Wales, Cohen-Hatton was homeless for about two years, an experience she hid for a long time. “I became afraid of anyone ever knowing about it,” she says. We begin with one of the worst tragedies in recent years in the UK, Grenfell, the tower that light up London with fire. Edric wasn’t one of the first firefighters there and doesn’t claim to have been but he tells us of his experiences, the heart-breaking task he was asked to perform, a search for victims of the fire. It has a wealth of traditions and history, sometimes tragic, sometimes not, that can so easily be overlooked if it is not put in the public domain for people to share and to reflect on. In this book I was aided by individuals with a similar version of bringing aspects of the past to life with true stories of bravery and sacrifice and of fictional tales which shows the work of London’s fire brigade in all its guises.