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A retained firefighter, also known as a Firefighter working the Retained Duty System (RDS), RDS Firefighter or on-call firefighter, in the United Kingdom and Ireland is a professional firefighter who may have full-time employment outside of the fire service but responds to emergency calls within their local area as and when required.〔(Department for Communities and Local Government: Fire & Resilience - Retained Duty System (accessed 23 April 07) )〕〔(ODPM: The Fire and Rescue service Retained Duty System - A review of recruitment and retention challenges, pub TSO, Feb 2005 (see p28 Terminology) )〕 When required to answer an emergency call, retained firefighters are summoned to the fire station by a radio pager (also known as a "bleeper"). Once at the station, the crews staff the fire engine and proceed to the incident. Retained firefighters are therefore required to live or work near to the fire station they serve. This allows them to respond to emergencies within acceptable and strict attendance time targets set out by each fire service. Retained firefighters are employed and trained by the applicable local authority fire and rescue service covering the particular county or area in which they serve. Typically, retained firefighters are employed in rural areas or in large villages or small towns. They provide cover to 90% of the area of the UK - there are 14,000 in England and Wales.〔Department for Communities and Local Government: Fire & resilience - Retained Duty System (accessed 23 April 07)〕 Of the approximately 8,500 operational firefighters in Scotland, about 32% are retained.〔(Scottish Executive: Retained firefighterd in the Scottish fire service (accessed 23 Apr 07) )〕 London Fire Brigade, West Midlands Fire Service〔The future of Sedgley Fire Station, which was an RDS station, is yet to be decided, but it is currently non-operational.〕 and Guernsey Fire and Rescue Service are the only three fire and rescue services in the British Islands that do not have any retained firefighters.〔(Department for Communities and Local Government: Fire & Resilience - Retained Duty System p56, sec 5.22(accessed 23 April 07) )〕 Unlike volunteer firefighters, retained firefighters receive an annual "retainer fee" and are paid on a "per emergency call" basis. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and the Retained Firefighters' Union (RFU) represent the interests of retained firefighters across the country. ==Emergency response== Retained firefighters were traditionally called "part-time firefighters". However this term is now widely acknowledged as inaccurate as most retained staff are not allowed to provide any less than 70 hours a week 'on call'. Some retained firefighters, for instance, provide 120 hours cover each week unlike their full-time colleagues, who normally work a 48-hour shift system over eight days. Wholetime firefighters do not usually respond to emergencies during the time when they are off duty, unless there are under dual contract arrangements. Generally, wholetime〔(ODPM: The Fire & Rescue Service Retained Duty System - A review of recruitment and retention challenges, pub TSO, Feb 2005 (see Part 1 Terminology) )〕 or full-time firefighters do not respond to calls when they are off-duty as they are assigned to a watch on permanent shifts. However, most retained firefighters can only provide cover at set times due to their full-time employment commitments. For example, it may be that some personnel can provide cover during the day in any given week or only evenings and weekends per week. Often it is a mixture of both. Availability to receive calls could depend upon the flexibility of the firefighter's full-time employer and the individual's personal circumstances. A critical level of fire cover must be provided at all times and retained firefighters are expected to give as much commitment as possible. In fact, they are not normally permitted to give less than 60 hours per week in terms of cover. On average, retained firefighters across the UK provide between 80 and 110 hours week on standby. When available for a call, retained firefighters carry radio pagers to alert them to an emergency call. They must live or work a maximum of 4.5 minutes from the fire station at which they serve and respond to the fire station before manning the fire appliance and attending an incident. The time is dependent on which fire and rescue organisation they work for. In Ireland, some on-call firefighters were summoned by means of an air raid-type siren mounted on the local fire station. Now they are all on a pager system, either controlled locally in the case of Cork and Dublin, or by a regional control centre (CAMP) in the rest of the country. Upon receiving an emergency call via radio pager, retained firefghters immediately respond to the fire station. Unlike many volunteer firefighters in the United States, retained firefighters are not permitted to use blue lights or sirens on their personal vehicles to get to the station, and they must obey normal road traffic laws at all times whilst en route. The British Government reviewed the situation in 2008, but decided that to give every retained firefighter a blue light would effectively "dilute" the importance of blue lights. Most importantly, use of blue lights by retained staff may cause confusion for local road users, particularly where multiple vehicles would be responding to a particular fire station from several directions at once. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Retained firefighter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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