Why do firefights (and other emergency personnel) typically work a one day on, two day off work schedule?
Typically, in industry, when 24-hour coverage is required, three shifts work 8-hour shifts each day. Even Police are usually on an eight hour shift.
So why do firefighters get to sleep on the job?
Got any cite describing such a schedule? It sounds implausible to me.
Because they don’t really work for 24 hours. They are on call. If there are no fires overnight then they sleep at the firehouse.
Got any cite describing such a schedule? It sounds implausible to me.
It is how they do it in Kansas City, and my understanding is that it’s a widespread practice. Sorry I don’t have a cite.
Ah, well, if you meant “on call” systems, no problem.
Firefighting is not a scheduled job, obviously, that involves punching in, producing 500 widgets, punching out and going home. Ideally, the firefighters do nothing, if there are no fires in the city. It would be kind of pointless to let the firefighters stay at home, only going to the fire station when there is an emergency to collect their trucks and equipment, and then going to the fire. It would waste valuable time. Much better to keep them at the station for 24 hours (and give them access to beds, kitchens, etc), then let them go home for 48.
Sounds okay to me.
That is exactly what they do Bryan. At least that is what I have seen.
It’s an easy way to man the job, and allow for time off. If you have ten guys to a fire duty watch, and they stand 1 on 2 off, then you need 30 guys total, all with ample time off. If they work only two days a week, they are still putting in 48 hrs per week. I’m sure it’s a little more, with all hands training, meetings, etc.
With three shifts per day, you need 30 guys - if they plan to work seven days a week. They can’t work 7 days a week, so you’d need more guys to cover the week.
When I was at a SAR station, I worked 2 on 2 off, sliding weekends. That meant, effective SAR coverage 24/7/365 with 8 - 10 people, total. Very rarely did the off duty section need to cover
for fatigue reasons. If you ran that job with 3 shifts per day, you’d need alot more people.
As for cops in shifts, I would guess you need shifts as cops are constantly on the streets patrolling or responding. They couldn’t do what they do for a full 24. Plus, you’d want more cops than firefighters. Cops out and about can be a deterrent to crime, whereas firefighters are not a deterrent to fires.
Firefighters do so much more than just fire response. I’d imagine that slow, do nothing duty days are pretty rare.
I just saw a report on TV about them doing this in my county and I was rather astonished.
Firestations get calls all the time. What happens when every 4 hours they get a call? After 20+ hours of this how can it be considered safe to send a firefighter into a possibly dangerous situation?
Bryan Ekers’s post makes no sense to me. There are on duty 1/3 of the time. Why make them work such long blocks??? What makes them different from police, ambulance drivers, etc.?
ORM, CRM, PRM, whatever you want to call it, it’s big nowadays. Those are just acronyms for resource management and/or risk management. I’ll guess that if f/f’s get closed to being “bagged”, IOW they have worked too many calls in one period, then others are called in for reponse/coverage until the duty section gets the necessary rest/recovery time.
If duty sections are constantly in the bag, then that info is used as evidence that more people are needed, and staffing needs to increase. Whether that means more shifts, or more people in a shift, is tailored to specific needs.
CG SAR units have seen many changes in this area over recent years, due to the safety issue when you send tired people out on cases. Nowadays, everything that duty crews do in a duty period is tracked and tallied to some extent. We have very specific guidelines as to how much work/response/rest/recovery one gets in a duty period.
curious74, were you watching Insomniac with Dave Atell on Thursday night too? 
I work 24 hours on, 24 off, 24 on, 5 days off. Believe me, its the best schedule anyone could ever want. Over an 8 week period, you average 42 hours per week. This week I worked Tues/Thurs, next week I’m on Wed/Fri (start 7am Wed, get out 7am Thurs).
Firefighters and EMTs commonly work something like this, since we’re allowed to sleep while at work. Police officers aren’t, since its difficult to drive a car while sleeping. Police officers do, however, do an 8 hour shift in a 4 on/2 off routine (in my area, at least), so you now have to stagger your workers to provide equal coverage as days-off cycle through the shift. Since us firefighters can’t do math goodly, we make it simple - everyone on the shift comes in at the same time (barring vacations, sick time, personal time, etc).
In my part of the world, we don’t do the 1 on/2 off schedule, since you only have 3 shifts working and its too tough on personnel. The 1 on/1 off/1 on/5 off we use allows 4 shifts, but it also cuts the hours you work (42 instead of (I think) 54). And it lets you have more time with your family or to work another job if you’re so inclined. Talking with some firefighters from the Dallas/FW area last month, they work the 1 on/2 off schedule, and they didn’t seem too enthused with it. One busy night and you’re done for the next 2 days. I can have the busy nights and I’ve still got time to recover.
That seeemd to be a very incoherent post on my part…
An addition to my rather pointless post earlier…
As I watched Insomniac on Thursday, it seemed that by spending 24 hours in the firehouse, cooking, sleeping, watching tv, then going to fight a fire, or what-have-you, was very important for the bonding of the firefighters. These guys were not only co-workers, but buddies, second families, because of the time they spent together. Firefighting is definitely requires massive amounts of teamwork. So, yah, I would think that the bonding is an important part of that 24 straight hours shift.
24 on 48 off makes the most sense. We have bunks, and sleep when we can, that’s why firehouses are genereally darkish all the time, a perpetual twilight. We usually don’t sleep all night – the most deadly fires occur then.
Changing shifts can be a royal pain in the butt, so it’s kept to a minimum (ER doctors work real long shifts too). One 24 hour shift can wipe you out, but it’s not that often. Also, out here, most calls are paramedic calls… Serious, working fires don’t happen anywhere all that often. Nobody could survive doing that for 24 hours straight for a regular basis.
There is just too much overlap in duties, time wise, to have an 8 hour shift.
I’ve recently retired after 35 years with a paid department. Our normal tours of duty consisted of two day tours (8AM to 6 PM) followed by 2 days off. On the third day, you started two night tours (6 PM to 8 AM) followed by three full days off, when, at 8 AM of the fourth day following, you began day tours again. As a contractural option, we were allowed to work mutual tours with a corresponding member opposite you. You worked your own day tour and his night tour. He came in to work the next day tour (yours) and his own night tour.This allowed you to work a ‘24’ and have three days off all the time. We were never allowed to work over 24 hours. OSHA (Occupational Safety Health…something) a Federal Govt. agency, assumed that you were fighting fires for 24 hours and that was the safety limit. Of course, this was over ridden quite often if a fire came in at the change of tour. Refer to FDNY on 9/11.
Well, lieutenant, I’ve never heard of a schedule rotation like yours, to be honest. All we have out here are 24/48 and some use a 6/4. The Feds work every other day.
But…
Here the IAFF (union) limits are 48 hours straight, although we frequently pull 72 hour shifts anyway.
Did you really work 1 day on, 3 off? Hell, with the ol’ Forest Service life was 16 hours straight, 30 days in a row. One reason I moved to structural firefighting right there…
Yes sir,24 on and 3 off. In fact after the 24 that began and ended at 8 AM, we had the next 3 days off plus up till 6 PM of the fourth day before you started your next 24 from 6 PM to 6 PM. In any given month, we worked 7 days. Hell, it made 35 years fly by.P.S. I was IAFF also, but for whatever reason, OSHA watched over our hours.We couldn’t accept OT connected to our tours.
Most of the departments around here (other than mine, there seem to be few working 24s) work 2 - 10 hour days, 2 - 14 hour nights, 4 days off. I only know of one community that does the 2 days/1 off/2 nights routine.
Contractually, we can’t be forced into working more than 48 hours straight. Guarantees that you can’t be ordered in on the “middle day” between the 2 shifts on. You can voluntarily come in during that time, but no one’s forcing you to. With the overtime hogs, though, there’s very little ordering in going on anyways.
Sadly, we’re not IAFF, we’re an AFSCME. If we went the IAFF-required 2 years union-free, we’d be the lowest paid (if even still existant) department in the country.