A force in fire and rescue

During the 2019/20 bushfires that raged over the east coast of Australia, Timothy (Sadiq) Hamid (1993) was part of the effort to protect homes and lives.

Tim, who took his wife’s surname of Hassiotis, has had an illustrious career in the Fire and Rescue field and shares a little of his amazing life here.

The year was 1993 and Bill Clinton was nestled in the Oval Office, an indelible movie about dinosaurs is released, Whitney Houston sings I will always love you and I, along with a contingent of my cohorts, graduate from CBC. After leaving school, I was afforded the opportunity to work as a metallurgist and gain formal qualifications as an engineer. Although I enjoyed my career, I soon realised that this career path was not where my passions lay. It was with this ideology that a seed was born to pursue my own interests. To use a cliché term, ‘be careful what you wish for’, as within a year, I found myself walking the deck of an oil rig off the coast of Mogadishu on pirate watch. The next five years passed in a tumultuous journey of aircraft, helicopters, ships and oil as I became entrenched as a commercial diver. For all the adventure, diving soon lost its appeal, as I had met my wife and began to settle down. It was during this time that I saw an advertisement for Fire and Rescue New South Wales. Fast forward 11 months and, after 16 weeks of intensive recruit training, my first steps as a professional firefighter began.

It is now hard to recall a time before firefighting, such is the esprit de corps that has been fostered over the last 18 years. Fire and Rescue NSW has become my second family and with shifts of 24 hours, I have at times spent more time with my colleagues than with my family. My first station was located to the southwest of Sydney in the suburb of Chester Hill. Both the station and the team provided me with great experience, whether through attendance at house fires, motor vehicle crashes or the daily touch football games with my colleagues. The job has shaped me over the intervening years; I walk forward when others run away; I remain calm when faced with adversity and take charge when things appear at their worst.

I was fortunate enough to gain specialised training in rescue, breathing apparatus, rescue shears, jaws of life and cordage, which soon became as common to my vernacular as coffee and milk. My career began to gain momentum and I was trained in urban search and rescue, where technical teams deploy internationally to sudden onset disaster, recovering casualties from collapsed buildings. Next came floodwater rescue, where once again the adage of a fire service was challenged – where you need to be prepared for anything.

Inspired by my commanders, it was at this point that I decided to upskill and pursue officer training. This was one of the most challenging aspects of my history in fire, evolving from ‘on the tools’ to determining strategies at major incidents. I was formidably trained and soon became comfortable with multi-agency incidents working in collaboration with other emergency services, stakeholders, port authorities and energy providers. I have represented Australia on the world scale for United Nations, driven skidoos through pristine alpine wonderlands and made comment on major event planning such as Invictus games.

My career has been rewarding and has offered so much. I reflect at times upon the difficult times of consoling a family member who has just lost their loved one in a fire and the senseless and tragic loss of life at a motor vehicle crash that forces me to question my own mortality. With these memories also come moments of sheer joy. The fact that I can walk into any fire station in NSW – heck, any fire station around the globe – and instantly know I have a new group of mates eager to build a friendship, such is the fraternity of firefighters.

I have seen treasured peers retire and fade away, fresh-faced recruits turn into influential leaders, and I continue to observe a family built on shared values and ideology, flourishing despite adversity and shift demands.

This job has shaped who I am; the organisation runs through my veins, and I am proud to be a firefighter.