A firefighter who was called to Grenfell wrote this after his shift, and even as an ex Fire Control Op I found it extremely difficult to read.
[This piece of writing is up on the Facebook ‘Save the Fire Service’ page and begins with ‘Sent to us at STUKFS, powerful and emotional story from a firefighter who attended Grenfell Tower’. “I’m not sure if this is something that I should vocalise or whether or not it should be shared with the world but as I sit at home thinking about the other night the Grenfell Tower I feel like people might want to know how the incident went from the point of view of a firefighter who was sent inside, while the tower burned all around us and how after years of cuts to the service I work for, how I feel about what we do and how the past few years have been for us. I’ve always been very proud of the job my colleagues and I do week in week out as part of the fire service. At times its hard, at others not so much but the uncertainty of what might happen is always there. We are a funny bunch, we like to laugh to play jokes on each other, sometimes we are silent and won’t tell you what we are thinking about. We laugh off the good natured banter directed at us from outside the service and mostly manage to do the same with the insults we get as a public service, even when it’s not always easy to do so. It is […]
