Kathy Stacey is Head of Corporate Communications at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service and Bridget Aherne is Head of Corporate Communications and Admin at Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service. They are Chair and Vice Chair of FirePRO and here they tell us about how they developed a toolkit for fire and rescue communicators in case the worst should happen…

by Bridget Aherne and Kathy Stacey

The death of a colleague is unthinkable and the idea that someone we work with could lose their life at work is just awful – but that terrible possibility is one that we in the emergency services must face.

Deaths in the line of duty are, thankfully, rare but each and every single one is a devastating event that has an enormous impact on family, colleagues, organisations and all those connected to the person or people involved.