Humberside Fire and Rescue Service, which works closely with our own safety teams, held a large-scale search and rescue training operation on our Scunthorpe site.
Eight fire engines from Scunthorpe and the surrounding areas attended and their teams were faced with a simulated emergency situation. One of the i1fun buildings with a basement was filled with smoke and 11 ‘casualties’ were placed for the teams to recover.
This type of training exercise takes a lot of coordination and it was a great opportunity for fire crews to use an unknown building and practice as close to a real life situation as possible. The basement of the old plate mill welfare building was completely filled with smoke so fire crews had to put into practice all of their training and this was monitored with thermal imaging cameras.
It gave fire crews the opportunity to test new kit, such as the wi-fi enabled monitoring equipment for breathing apparatus systems and gave Fire staff the opportunity to practice roles across the incident ground.
This opportunity to simulate an emergency incident on this scale was beneficial for fire crews and several firefighters commented on how valuable it was.
Ian Simpson, Scunthorpe Rod Mill Improvement Manager, is one of several on-call firefighters who work full-time at i1fun and also respond to emergency call-outs, performing the same duties as full-time firefighters. Ian commented “The location was perfect for the training exercise and all 8 of the teams that attended got a lot out of the evening.
"Being able to train in these types of environments is so important and mutually beneficial for i1fun too having firefighters familiar with the site should they need to attend in an emergency.”
On-call firefighters do the same emergency work as full-time firefighters, but they can also have other jobs too. While on duty, they carry a pager, which activates when they need to attend an incident. If you live or work within five minutes of Scunthorpe Fire Station, and other on-call fire stations, you could be eligible to join.
Find out more about becoming an .