The Fire Brigades Union has produced a series of videos to coincide with the COP26 summit, which are featured for you to watch below.
Focusing on the unique relationship that firefighters have with our climate and environment, the videos feature stories from four FBU members who have fought flooding and wildfires.
The videos make the case that firefighters need the right resources to fight these incidents, and bring home the fact that climate change is on the rise – making the point that firefighters know an emergency when they see one, and that applies to the climate emergency.
The series features a video bringing together all four of the firefighters’ stories, as well as four videos going into depth with the individual firefighters on their experiences.
These experiences are as varied as they are impactful, with firefighters speaking about how they have personally been affected by climate change and their own worries about what the future might hold.
The summary video in the series is featured below, with the four individual story films following below that.
Climate change: firefighters know an emergency when they see one (summary video)
Rosa Crowley-Bennett, a firefighter in Newcastle, always had an interest in climate change issues but never thought she’d be fighting climate change in such a direct way. She describes the experience of fighting wildfires where you know only rain will ever put them out, and details the immense strain that large-scale incidents, such as wildfires, place on the service.
Colin Brown, a Crew Commander and FBU member in Perth, Scotland, tells us about when his own house flooded and he had to choose between going home to help, and going to fight a house fire that he was needed at. He also speaks about the effects of under resourcing when his service had to divert calls across the Irish Sea, to Northern Ireland.
Simon Jakeman, the first ever union green rep for the FBU, and a Green Champion Coordinator and firefighter in South West London, tells the story of how he decided to try and make a difference through starting a garden – at his fire station. That idea has now spread to dozens of fire stations around the country.
Jamie Kelly, a Crew Manager in Southsea, expresses his concern that firefighters have to leave the city relatively unattended in order to fight wildfires. He also talks about the particular challenge that wildfires pose, highlighting how they spread in an unpredictable way that building fires do not. He also discusses going to the USA to learn about how they fight wildfires there, describing wildfires so large that you could drive ‘for hours through blackened, burnt woodland’.
For more information, go to www.fbu.org.uk
