The pony groom ready to tackle wildfires at a moment's notice

At about 06:30 on 30 July, Jenny Olley received an alert waking her up. It was a deployment to a wildfire at Dunwich Heath, Suffolk.

Within five minutes of the pager sounding, on-call firefighters have to get out of bed, get dressed, and race to their nearest station.

Like almost two-thirds of Suffolk's firefighters, Olley, 35, works part-time, springing into action at a moment's notice.

"I'm loving every moment of it," she said.

Olley, who works with polo ponies by day in Newmarket, had been at Bury St Edmunds fire station until the early hours of the morning, aware that other crews were already at Dunwich Heath.

At its peak, the fire was the size of 210 football fields, engulfing hundreds of acres of internationally protected heathland.

"When we turned up to Dunwich originally, you could see the smoke from miles away," Olley said.

"Normally, you don't see the smoke from that far. We thought it must be around the corner, and we were still driving half an hour later."

Suffolk Fire and Rescue employs 381 on-call firefighters, but has capacity for another 50.

The part-timers are paid a retainer based on the hours they are available, plus a disturbance fee and hourly wage of around £14 when they are called out to an incident.

With crews from across the country joining efforts to fight the wildfires, Olley said: "We're trying to keep everyone's spirits up and help each other out.

"Even when you're not on call, you've got to go and pick one of your fellow firefighters' children up from school, or go and get their dogs from the house."

Her on-call colleagues include a builder, a tyre salesman, and a McDonald's employee. They all have to live or work within a couple of miles of Newmarket fire station.

Olley wants to be a full-time firefighter, but says there simply isn't the capacity.

"People can apply and have to wait for years for spaces to come up. It's just one of those jobs that once you're in, no one wants to leave."

Suffolk Fire and Rescue told the BBC it has a sufficient pool of candidates waiting for full-time employment, but they do need more on-call staff.

Olley said: "There are absolutely no rules about how tall you are or how short you are, how strong you are. Everyone's got different strengths and weaknesses."

"I haven't ever really been scared as such," she added.

"Part of being a firefighter is the fact that you can take a breath, have a second and go, 'OK, this is a job we're here to do it'."

"It's brilliant, the excitement you get when that alert goes," she said.

"Whether it's a fire, or an automatic fire alarm, or an animal in distress stuck in a ditch, every job is so different."

"You walk away from every job and you think, 'I've helped somebody'," Olley said.

She urged people to go and talk to their local fire department if they were interested in signing up.

"You have to able to drop whatever you're doing and run to the station when the alert goes," she said.

"Our employers are amazing. They understand that we're going out there to help the community."

As for her family, she said: "They get woken up in the middle of the night with the alerters, they have us coming home in the middle of the night. They hold the fort while we're busy."

A spokesperson from Suffolk Fire and Rescue said: "We're always keen to hear from anyone who wants to know more about on-call firefighting or is considering joining."

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