A FIRE chief celebrating 25 years of service in Oxfordshire has urged others to sign up to save lives.

Grahame Mitchell joined Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service as a firefighter in 1992 and has since worked his way up to the role of assistant chief fire officer.

Mr Mitchell, who began his career with a 16-week residential training course in Didcot, said the role of a firefighter had changed significantly over the past quarter of a century.

He said: “It’s about a lot more than responding to emergencies – it’s about a balance between community education, working hard at preventing a wide range of emergencies and still having the most professional response when things do go wrong.”

He added that working more closely with the police and ambulance services in Oxfordshire had made people safer.

Mr Mitchell started his working life as a plumbing engineer before taking fitness and aptitude tests to realise his childhood dream of becoming a firefighter.

After his Didcot training course his first posting was to the Rewley Road fire station in Oxford.

Reflecting on the past 25 years, he encouraged people to sign up to make a difference to their community.

He said: “Not everyone can say they have saved a life or they still want to be in the same profession for this long.”

“You have to be resourceful, think fast and be motivated.

“If you want to make a difference, serve the community, then you should consider joining.

"I would like to pass on my knowledge and experience by welcoming new firefighters.”

The fire service has evolved to take on more and more rescue work over the decades leading to the inclusion of the word rescue in its name.

The county has been hit by a number of devastating floods in recent years, most notably in 2007 and the winter of 2013/14 and the fire service has always played a crucial role in the response to the disaster.

Mr Mitchell said: “We have a real skill in responding to floods and in recent years we have seen adverse weather start to impact on our county and its residents – flooding is equally as distressing as experiencing a fire.

“We assist and can get people to safety but to see their homes destroyed and all that devastation, it stays with you.”

To sign up to be an on-call firefighter go to oxfordshire.gov.uk