The thing is, you cn’t really compare the fire service with the ambulance service and the police. As a paramedic, I’m out from the beginning of the shift, until my mealbreak (usually about 6 hours into the shift) and then back about 30-45 minutes after my shift finished. I work 10 hour shifts, but I do prefer 12’s as once I’m at work I might as well get as many of my hours in as possible as lose as few days as possible.
I can’t really comment on the police, but…
With no disrespect to any of the fire fighters here, it seems that during the day they are busy with training/ community work/ fitting smoke alarms/ fire safety checks and all those other things that fire fighters do when not putting out fires or cutting up cars. This work mostly fits around other peoples office hours. At night, they are either busy, or having a quiet one. Where we can be stop/ start they can often have whole night shifts without a job.
With this in mind, the day shift wont want to start earlier, and sit around the station for a few hours before they can get on with their daily work, and the night shift don’t want to be getting to work later and leaving earlier, Since any big jobs they get have a tendency to run on, and no one likes being late off!
12 hour rotas seem like a great idea until someone is late off. our 12 hour shifts are 07-19 and 19-07. If a crew gets a job at 0650, and doesn’t get back to station until, say 0800, you’ve paid 4 people to cover and hours work where two people would be needed, and there aren’t spare vehicles to swap onto. Quite often we are waiting for the previous crew to come off. I imagine this is even worse where fire stations have only 2/3 vehicles?
