How often do firefighter/paramedics get paged during their time off?
Asked by Cub
My boyfriend has been doing a lot of rideouts with station 264, and I am curious about this shift business that he'll be dealing with when he becomes a firefighter in the future. (Hopefully he will, he loves it) I know there's a 24hr on/48hr off shift.. So during the 48hr off time, how often do the firefighter's get paged to a call, and since it's during their time off, are the required to go, or is it optional?

Best Answer:
Well, can you look into your crystal ball and predict when he'll be needed? Neither can anyone else. I don't think they are paged on their time off. I think you might be mixing that up with volunteer firefighters. When you're employed as a firefighter, time off means, TIME OFF. You don't work. You aren't paged. When he's on, he'll have "down time" while he's waiting for tragedy to strike, that he'll spend in the station house and he can be called at any time.

Unless there is some major incident, they won't get called while off duty.
Answered by Mikey

Paid departments do get paged on the 48 off hours......It is the duty of the firefighter to call in and answer the page. Who knows how often they get called in...it is not on a schedule!
Answered by jan l