Grenfell Tower fire, the media, the emergency services

Those of you that actually know me on LinkedIn will probably know in my younger years I was a firefighter, just over 7 years service and 998 shouts. (Stepped down in 2002 as I wouldn't go on strike, and couldn't pass the mates on the picket lines).

The awful events of the other night bring back into the forefront of my mind some of the things that I haven't shared with people, when I do offer up some of the stories / situations you come across in the emergency services I haven't and wouldn't describe the scenes that the media has dwelled on for the past couple of days.

Clearly I never had to deal with the scale of Grenfell Tower, but the individual situations covered by the media, that its been hard to avoid, are basically the most traumatic and horrific things that you can imagine and fortunately rather rare to deal with or actually have happen to you. But they are similar to issues I had to face.

It reminds me of our engine being followed by a camera crew on some of the 'working' shouts - it was later televised on ITV and occasionally pops up on some of the satellite stations (you see my boots poking out of a car at a RTC and me doing resuss on a dummy during a Coventry airport practise but that another story) but I never really saw the point of people eating their dinner in front of the TV watching what was that person(s) most traumatic experience of their life. The producers of the show convinced the families or people that survived the incident to agree to be televised as it helped the world see what a marvellous / heroic job the emergency services did but I was never asked.

I was fortunate enough to receive personal thanks from some of the people I helped and somewhat painfully thanked by family or friends of those that i couldn't help. But that will always mean more than a voice over saying what heroes they are etc.

Which brings me to the first of two points I wanted to make - that the media coverage of this event has been sensationalising what is a catastrophic event and the ability to get into it as it happens basically exposes the audience to the worst part of emergency services - being there and not being able to help. I would imagine many views will be experience PTSD.

And the second point, on the off chance that any of the emergency services that attended that or similar incidents might read this and take some value from the way I feel about my experiences in the fire service. Yes we all know its a great role and frankly an honour to be called upon to help but that help doesn't always produce the results we want. Simply I look at it I turned up to a situation not of my creating and always worked my best to help, and left the scene having tried my best to contribute positively to the situation. I am proud of that, I trust you will be too.