I was look­ing through the post and I found a fly­er for ‘Schutz & Ret­tung Zurich’ (Safe­ty & Res­cue). There was a fire en­gine on it along with the words “we’re look­ing for he­roes.” I smiled and put the fly­er to the side but didn’t throw it away. Af­ter a while, I de­cid­ed I want­ed to know more about the ser­vice and what it in­volved. I was cu­ri­ous because we don’t have any­thing like it in Bul­gar­ia, which is where I’m orig­i­nal­ly from. I was in­vit­ed to at­tend a train­ing ses­sion and was im­me­di­ate­ly fascinated by the fire en­gine, which is so packed with tools that it resembles a Swiss army knife. I was des­per­ate to take a ride in it. That was six years ago; the same length of time I’ve been part of the Kom­panie Zürich West brigade (for­mer­ly Kom­panie Lim­mat­tal). Through this group, I’ve met new friends and learned to ap­pre­ci­ate what team spir­it tru­ly means. However, the best thing about it is that I’m giving some­thing back to my com­mu­ni­ty.

You have to pass a pro­fi­cien­cy test first of all. Then there are a num­ber of per­son­al re­quire­ments to ful­fil in terms of your phys­i­cal and men­tal con­di­tion. Are you able to work un­der pres­sure? Are you flex­i­ble? Are you re­li­able? Also, are you able to use the breath­ing equip­ment and oth­er tech­ni­cal de­vices prop­er­ly? When practising, you go to the sta­tion when your pager beeps, no mat­ter where you are. Once enough col­leagues have ar­rived, the fire en­gine will head out. Of course, you want to be there before the fire engine heads out, so you practise to get there in time.

Dur­ing train­ing ses­sions, we learn to deal with fear. We prac­tise emer­gen­cies over and over. How should we han­dle dif­fer­ent chal­lenges? How should we re­spond to a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion? This is how we build trust, in our­selves and as a team. Train­ing takes place once a month. Every year, we do some shifts with Schutz & Ret­tung, Zurich’s pro­fes­sion­al fire de­part­ment, to learn, share ex­pe­ri­ences and de­vel­op a proper team spirit. Dur­ing these shifts, we’re part of a crew that goes on real calls. My re­spon­si­bil­i­ties both as part of the vol­un­tary fire ser­vice and with my job have had a pos­i­tive im­pact on me. With the fire brigade, the fo­cus is on per­son­al safe­ty, fol­low­ing or­ders to the let­ter and car­ry­ing out in­struc­tions. When you’re out on a call, you have to move quick­ly. It’s im­por­tant for every mem­ber of the team to know their du­ties and abil­i­ties. By con­trast, my day job as an ar­chi­tect and fire pre­ven­tion ex­pert is more about being proactive, taking a breath, analysing the sit­u­a­tion and then acting. They are distinctly different roles and I ben­e­fit from be­ing able to ex­pe­ri­ence both.

It’s fan­tas­tic to be able to in­te­grate my ex­pe­ri­ences with the fire ser­vice into my work as a fire pre­ven­tion of­fi­cer. Part of the work my team undertakes involves preparing fire-fight­ing and de­ploy­ment plans – the fire brigade needs these in the event of an emer­gency. My prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence is invaluable here. Where is there enough room for a fire en­gine? Where do emer­gency ve­hi­cles need to gain ac­cess? The fire ser­vice needs these plans to be able to co­or­di­nate with other emer­gency ve­hi­cles quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly dur­ing an emer­gency. It’s a huge re­spon­si­bil­i­ty!