My Story: Tim Jones

My name is firefighter Tim Jones. I have recently joined Avon Fire and Rescue Service and I’ve joined Kingwood Blue Watch. 

I joined the fire service for the sense of adventure, to do something different every day and do some good stuff in my community. 

It’s a bit different to my last job. Mainly we travelled all over the world as an army photographer. We went into disaster areas, went into operational environments to Iraq and Afghanistan. So that was mainly an international sort of thing but this is all home in the Avon area. 

I believe I am making a difference at home. It’s one of those things where you see the effects of what you do. So when you go to an incident and you’ve done something good, you’ve helped other people. The people appreciate it and they tell you straight away there so you do see a direct effect immediately. 

Some of the skills are transferable definitely. So the people skills, the fitness, the way I go about myself and how I do my day-to-day work, that’s transferred across.

But I mean the job itself is completely different. I’ve never worked on a pump or with hoses putting out fires, doing RTCs, cutting people out of cars. so it is all completely new for me so I’ve learned a lot of new skills in a new knowledge base. 

Challenges I’ve faced joining the fire service have been learning all brand new knowledge. So everything from firefighting to RTC to a little bit of extra trauma knowledge.

It’s all new skills they all have their own different challenges these new skills. I just take it as it comes.

We had good instructors at Seven Park and the Watch here are brilliant. They’re really helpful if I need any help with anything. They are very encouraging in helping me on my journey. 

Being a firefighter, the home-work family life balance is brilliant. You do two days, two nights, and four off. I get to see my wife and kids every day. 

I didn’t in the army because I lived and worked away and sometimes we were away for months at time. This, for work-family life balance, is a brilliant job.

My wife loves it and my son he’s three years old – it blows his mind every time I’d say I’ve been to this and put this fire out or I’ve cut someone out of a car, or I’ve been up a ladder. It still blows his mind every day so yeah he really loves it. 

Anyone looking they join the fire service, I say yes you can. 

You can just apply. Put in the effort, get fit, get some experience, get out into the real world and get as much experience as you can and just give it a go.