Firefighters have told the ECHO colleagues are relying on foodbanks and how they are close to leaving the service.
Across the country, firefighters are voting on strike action after members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) rejected an offered pay rise of 5%. Members of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) who spoke to the ECHO said they and their colleagues are increasingly struggling with demands of the job as stress around the cost of living grows.
They want a higher pay rise they feel reflects the scope of their role, which includes responding to chemical incidents or road traffic collisions, and running educational sessions at schools, on top of putting out fires.
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One firefighter, who asked not to be named, said he wanted to be a firefighter since he was a child but he's considering leaving the profession because he believes the risk and trauma he faces make the job "worth more" than they're paid.
Having worked as a firefighter for a decade, he said: "Dealing with certain jobs is mentally hard. I've had a certain incident when I've had, in inverted commas, a wobble, where mentally it hit me. Nobody prepares you for this, you don't get trained for any of this, you don't know how you're going to react.
"They will say, 'You are going to see things', and people take that as a badge of honour. It's really not. I've had an incident where I've had to cut a man down who'd killed himself. Nothing prepares you for that. When it happened to me, you kind of brush it off. In the fire service, they do a thing called 'diffusing' when an officer comes down and basically asks if everything is okay, but half an hour, an hour after that incident, you don't really feel anything.
"I don't think you've processed it all, and you're still in work, so you can still get turned out to something else, so you don't really switch off from it, but it affected me a couple of months later. I didn't really speak to anyone about it, not even my wife. Then it came out when I was around friends, it just got talked about, and I just broke down crying, to be honest."
He earns around £30,000 a year working 48-hour weeks, but wages can be as low as £23,000. Although firefighters have received pay rises of 1% or 2% in recent years, firefighters who spoke to the ECHO said they haven't felt this increase.
With interest rates at the highest level in more than a decade, he fears monthly mortgage payments will go up by hundreds of pounds when his his fixed-rate ends in 18 months. The family mostly relies on the dad-of-three's wages, and he wonders if he can afford to keep the job he's dreamt of since he was a kid. He finds this "devastating".
He added: "Our bills are going up, so that's a worry because some of the figures I've seen for mortgage increases are eye-watering, and it could be a serious problem. If our wages don't go up, and I've been thinking about this for the last six to 12 months, I might leave this job, which I never thought I'd ever do. It's just not sustainable, and everything's out of my hands. I can't cut my bills any more.
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"I think everyone in this country feels the same, especially public services. They feel they're unappreciated, people don't understand what they have to deal with, the demands of it, and I think we should all be paid fairly, and that's at a minimum matching inflation.
"I think we're worth more, to be honest, I really do. On the back of it, inflation is more than double that, so it's a real terms 5% pay cut. I just think we're worth more. It's dawned on me in the last couple of years that, the things we do, the things we see, I think we just deserve more. And this is our opportunity to fight for it."
He's not alone. Chris, a dad of one, has already cancelled the family's Sky subscription, and sold their second car because he can't afford to run it, despite needing it to get to the station within 30 minutes if he's called in while his wife is at work.
Chris, 31, said: "Every time you get a couple of percent, everything else goes up - your pension contributions, tax. When it lands in the bank, it doesn't feel like it gets any better."
Chris added: "We've never had crazy amounts of money to spend, but if you've got £50, you can go to the pub with your mates or take the baby to the park and not have to worry about buying an ice cream. But we just haven't got that anymore, literally the gas and leccy and diesel have seen to it that we have got no spare cash."
Some firefighters in Merseyside are relying on foodbanks and the goodwill of colleagues, according to John, who's been a firefighter for two years. The 28-year-old, who's looking for part-time work between shifts, said: "I've got a colleague, a single father with a couple of children, he's actually been going to foodbanks.
"There's another person who we've actually brought food in for, or even when we're eating in the station, there are individuals who will take the food home to eat the following day for their lunches. We're just humans, men and women who put ourselves at risk for our community as trained professionals. To have to go to foodbanks or take mortgage holidays, I think it's disgusting."
Many top up their wages by working overtime, but this will end for most from Thursday, December 1 as local FBU members take action short of strike, including refusal to undertake pre-arranged overtime. This separate local dispute is, in part, over what the FBU sees as MFRS' unagreed expansion of the role of firefighters in the contracts of new entrants.
Firefighters who spoke to the ECHO see this sacrifice of overtime and their willingness to forego pay on strike days, should members vote to take industrial action, as testament to just how bad the situation with pay and stress has become. Like many in the fire service, Chris has wanted to be a firefighter since he was a kid. Now he feels financial pressures are so great, he's applying for jobs
Chris, who's seen colleagues leave for better paid jobs in the last two years, said: "If we don't get a meaningful pay rise this year, I think people will start listening to their partners when they're begging them to go and get a better paid job. That's not beneficial to the public. We need competent and confident people to be good at the job, not just bums on seats and new people because everyone else is leaving."
Firefighters were initially offered a pay rise of 2%, which MFRS described as "unacceptable". The fire service budgeted for a pay increase of 2.5% and warned any pay increase not funded by the government could lead to cuts elsewhere in the service, leading to " a direct impact on the response [it] could provide to the communities of Merseyside".
A spokesperson for the service said its chief fire officer, Phil Garrigan, has called on the government to at least match pay offers extended to public sector workers, who have been offer pay rises around 5%. The spokesperson said: "In the Chief Officer's discussions with the Home Secretary and in a series of letters sent to respective fire ministers, the chief has sought to make the case for additional monies recognising the role that firefighters play in their communities and that any alternative may lead to cuts in the vital services provided by the service.
"Neither the chief fire officer nor the authority agree to cutting services, particularly having seen increases in recent times despite austerity. The chief fire officer and the authority will continue to press the government for the necessary funding for a fair pay rise for our staff that also allows us to maintain our current high level of service to the public."
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