What do firefighters do?

Firefighting is challenging, exciting and means you play an invaluable role in the community.

A typical day as a career firefighter could include:

  • Urban and rural firefighting
  • Road crash rescue
  • Technical rescue
  • Urban search and rescue
  • Confined space rescue
  • Hazardous material handling (HAZMAT)
  • Providing emergency care
  • Assisting other combat agencies in emergencies
  • Creating community resilience through education

Part of being a firefighter is undertaking study and assessments to help you stay at the top of your game.

You’ll also have the opportunity to move outside the brigade environment into areas like training, community fire safety and volunteer management. This helps create a greater understanding of the TFS, its role and the services we deliver to the community. It also helps you develop leadership and strategic management abilities.

The big benefit in becoming a firefighter is that you are providing an essential service to members of the community during their greatest time of need. You can’t get anything more satisfying than that!

As with all things, there is a less glamorous side to being a firefighter. The job is a combination of intense training and routine activities suddenly interrupted by the alarm to signal a fire or other emergency. The situations encountered at incidents may be stressful to some people as they can involve exposure to injury and death.

Our firefighters are selected based on their ability to meet our selection criteria including medical, health and fitness, and aptitude tests.