‘I earn £34k to make life or death decisions as a coastguard'

Telegraph

4 days ago

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Coastguard shifts can go very quickly from zero to 100. You might spend hours doing routine tasks, with no emergencies. But then, when the calls come in, it's all hands on deck. You often get two or three or even 10 incidents all at the same time, so you have to prioritise them.
I've been doing this job for over a decade. I lead a small team of officers who receive the emergency calls. My role is to determine the severity of the situation and then to plan and coordinate the response – tasking the lifeboats, helicopters or rescue teams. You sometimes have to be creative to locate a vessel, which is daunting when dealing with people's lives.
What surprises most people is how much of our work involves suicide or attempted suicide. It makes up the largest percentage of all incident types. It's something we see almost every single day, or even multiple times a day. Otherwise, we deal with anything from a major maritime disaster (thankfully, these are rare), or a missing child, through to somebody who has twisted their ankle on a cliff path.
We're particularly busy in the summer, at weekends and on public holidays. Sometimes the good weather seems to encourage some people to mix drinking alcohol with taking risks at the coast, which is not a good combination. Drunken swims often don't end well.
A lot goes through your mind during the high-stakes rescues. In most scenarios, I will devise a plan A, B, and even C. Then I'll decide which one to go with (though I'll normally spend the next few hours doubting my decision, hoping I picked the right one). Thankfully, to date, I have.
Often, it'll be apparent from the outset that the people involved will not survive. Occasionally, though, you get a happy surprise. I've had times when it seemed that all hope was lost, but you just keep going and going, and then suddenly you'll hear from the helicopter radio that they've located the person in the water – and they're alive. Those incidents are the ones that you remember. It makes you want to keep searching.
We're lucky in the UK – we have a lot of lifeboats, helicopters and rescue coordination centres, all the way from the Shetland Islands to Cornwall. We also have a relatively large number of Coastguard officers on at any one time. That said, most people underestimate how long a rescue team can take to reach them. A lifeboat normally launches within 10 or 15 minutes, as does a helicopter (at least during the daytime). But they still have to travel to the location. Whereas a person can drown in less than a minute.
Another thing a lot of the public don't know – and a good safety message – is 'if you see someone in trouble at the coast, dial 999 and ask for the coastguard' (you'd be amazed how many still ask for the police).
The most common misconception is that the Coastguard and the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) are the same organisation. We're not. The Coastguard is a state function, like the police, who coordinate the rescues. But the RNLI is an independent charity that provides the rescue boats, made up mostly of (unpaid) volunteers. We work very closely together, but we're not the same. People also think the Coastguard does customs work, but the focus is on search and rescue, counter-pollution and traffic monitoring.
The Coastguard has had quite a high turnover of staff over the past decade. Some people find the hours difficult – we do four 12-hour shifts in a row, then four days off, part of which is spent sleeping and recovering from the jet lag-inducing night shift. Others find the nature of the work difficult. However, that has meant that for those of us who have stayed, there's been good promotion opportunities, and we've progressed fairly quickly.
In terms of salary, an entry-level officer will earn about £25,000 a year plus £7,500 in allowances for working anti-social hours, rising up to £34,000 plus allowances for team leaders like me. That's the same nationally, with the exception of London, so those salaries go a lot further in some parts of the UK than in others.
As civil servants, we're also part of the government pension scheme, which is pretty generous, with employer contributions at around 28pc.
To thrive in this job, you have to be fairly mentally robust and able to detach yourself. Some of the emergency calls that we receive can be fairly distressing – people on the other end of the phone will be having just about the worst day of their life, and it's essential that we remain calm, logical and professional. I think we are probably fairly paid compared with the other emergency services. Although it can be high intensity for short periods, generally we are a lot quieter than the ambulance or police, taking a very small number of calls compared to them.
You can't really prepare mentally for emergencies. But you do get used to it. We decompress as a team, sometimes joking about incidents in ways we wouldn't in public. Even though we're fairly detached from the danger as Coastguard officers, these can be intense emotional moments that stick in your memory if you don't learn to cope.
Still, the job isn't all drama; we actually spend the most time on routine tasks. Every three hours we broadcast the weather to vessels on the radio, very much like the BBC Radio 4 shipping forecast. That can be pretty dull.
Also, there's quite a lot of paperwork that comes after every incident which we coordinate – including when we get malicious fake calls. We get the occasional hoax call. It seems the objective is usually to get a large-scale search response. While it may be exciting to watch a helicopter or a lifeboat search through rough seas, what these people don't understand is the immense risk the crews of that aircraft and boat are putting themselves at. My biggest nightmare is a hoax call ending in an accident for a rescue unit. Search and rescue is intrinsically dangerous for those who carry it out. It would be a tragedy if a false distress call ended in the death or injury of a responder.
I was attracted to the service by the variety that the role offered. I'm somebody who doesn't like every day to be the same, and that's certainly the case here. I was also attracted by the relative ease of joining; there are no minimum qualifications or requirements. Cliché as it may sound, I also wanted to help people, and that is literally the point of what we do, every day.
This job has definitely changed how I view the sea and how people engage with it. Before I started with the Coastguard, I used to think that scuba diving looked like a fun activity. Now I think it looks incredibly dangerous and I wouldn't want to do it. It's amazing how quickly scuba diving can go wrong for somebody. You could extend that to a lot of water-based recreational activities. Most of the people we rescue have ended up in the water with no intention of entering it – through an accident or through negligence.
The most important thing is that people educate themselves about the risks. Those who grew up (or live) by the coast understand the dangers, but many inland visitors don't. What may look like an inviting and enjoyable place to swim may have dangerous undercurrents or tidal rips. The sea is a risky environment, and it's relentless – it takes no prisoners.