By Eric White
AFTER four years on the job, Sam Crudgington is just as proud to be a firefighter as he was on the day he joined – and it’s all thanks to the experience he gained as a fire cadet.
Sam, 22, signed up to become a fully-fledged firefighter at Corringham Fire Station in 2012 after completing the Service’s Young Firefighter’s programme.
The course at Orsett Fire Station gave him the skills he needed to best know how to respond to incidents across Essex.
Recently Sam used this knowledge to assist at a bedroom fire in Basildon and road traffic collision in Langdon Hills in just two hours, as part of Corringham’s dedicated on-call fire crew.
When he is not responding to incidents, Sam runs a company that carries out checks on fire extinguishers and smoke alarms in Essex.
Sam said: “The Young Firefighter’s course, as Fire Cadets was known at the time, really helped me to understand and learn the skills needed to become a fully-fledged firefighter.
“I have always known from very young age that I wanted to make my community a safer place to live and the Young Firefighter’s course gave me the platform I needed to achieve this.
“It helped me understand the life of an ECFRS firefighter. Now I am experiencing that life first hand, responding to incidents across the County.”
Sam is not the first success story to come out of the ECFRS Cadet and Young Firefighter programmes though as the Community Development Team have a number of former students currently serving as firefighters within Essex and London.
For more on the Service’s Fire Cadet Course, visit www.essex-fire.gov.uk/Youth_Engagement/.
If you would like to join one of our busy on-call fire crews click http://www.essex-fire.gov.uk/Recruitment/.
