Become a volunteer

Being part of a Volunteer Fire Brigade is probably more different than you think.

Almost anybody can join a Brigade, male or female, young or old, those looking for adventure or those just wanting to contribute to their community.

There are opportunities for people from all backgrounds within a Volunteer Fire Brigade.

The role you play in a Brigade depends completely on what you would like to do.

You can be hands-on at an emergency, or you can provide support to those people who are.

You can even have a role that doesn’t expose you to emergency incidents.

The one aspect the roles all have in common is that they require you to attend a weekly

Brigade training night, and that you participate in Brigade activities

Operational Fire Fighter

These people respond to emergencies. They drive the Appliances, make up the crew at fires, medical, hazardous substance and other incidents.

They are the front line members of the Brigade. Training is supplied to ensure they can do their jobs safely, and to the best of their ability.

Operational Firefighters carry rank, which is related to their qualifications and skills. Often the qualifications and skills that people gain from being a Volunteer Firefighter are beneficial in other parts of their lives.

Operational Support

As the title suggests, these people support operational Firefighters on the incident ground, by carrying out tasks that are non-hazardous to free up Firefighters for more specific tasks.

These duties include: people and traffic control, transporting of equipment, assisting the incident controller, and other duties that are not in the incident hot zone.

Training is supplied and operational support staff carry rank to ensure structure at an incident is maintained.

Brigade Support

This role allows people who want to contribute to the Brigade and community the opportunity to do so without having to face the challenge of responding to emergencies.

It can be an important role, like providing administrative support for the day-to-day running of the Brigade, or more handson, like presenting fire safety programs to community groups like schools or the elderly. For all of these roles, people bring with them skills and attributes that benefit the Brigade. They all in return gain many skills and attributes that benefit them in other parts of their life.

The Firefighters’ role includes the roles of Operational Support and Brigade Support.

The Operational Support role includes the role of Brigade Support. Essentially, you get to choose your level of involvement.

To find out more contact your nearest Fire Station.

When the fire service calls it’s not just the volunteer firefighters who answer, it’s also their employers.

Every working day businesses across Marlborough support local brigades by allowing their volunteers to respond to incidents.

By employing a volunteer firefighter these businesses become an essential part of the support crew because without their support, it would be difficult for volunteers to attend emergencies during work hours.

Not only do businesses gain a sense of community pride, but their volunteer firefighter employees also offer a number of transferable skills they’ve developed during their training with Fire and Emergency.

The training, skills and experience gained by emergency services volunteers are transferrable to the workplace. Emergency services volunteers are not only trained in technical activities, but develop high levels of personal skill and competencies.

Emergency service volunteering requires commitment, the ability to cope with high pressure, and the determination to help others.

Volunteers gain training in areas such as:

• Confidence and teamwork

• Nav igation and problem solving

• Emergency management and decision making

• Ef fective communication (both oral and technical)

• Health and safety

• Te chnical and mechanical training

• Leadership, delegation and following instructions

• First aid

Thank you to all of the Marlborough businesses who support Fire and Emergency by supporting their volunteer firefighter employees.