Javier is a firefighter in the London Fire Brigade and a personal trainer specialising in outdoor training. I wanted to talk to him about training to be a firefighter during the pandemic. When he first applied to be a firefighter, it was 2019 and we had no idea about what was going to happen. Jump to 8th June 2020 when he started the training course, and the world had changed. 

One of the first implications was that his cohort couldn’t go in to get measured for their uniforms… Yes, you guessed it the first day of training was quite amusing with people wearing shirts far too long and massive trousers. Laughing aside, Javier talks about how demanding the training was. He says, ‘I am almost 40 years old, and I’ve done many different things in my life, and some of them I consider were quite tough or difficult. None of it was as difficult and challenging like this’. 

After completing the training course, he started at Ealing Fire Station as a firefighter underdevelopment or for those in the know ‘a sprog’! He says ‘nothing prepares you for station life’ as there was so much to learn, and it is very important to show you can do the job and not do anything stupid. Working as part of a team is vital he says, ‘we are all little cogs, and if any of the little cogs don’t spin properly you are going to have problems’. The interview is full of insights into what it’s like being a firefighter, plus how important it is to look at the positives even when the situation looks grim. This interview was recorded on Thursday 5th August - 7pm BST.

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