1,200 firefighters. It has no on-call retained firefighters. All fire stations within the service are full-time, and work on two types of shift: CORE – 10-hour day-shift, or 14-hour shift-night shift covered by four watches, comprising Red, White, Blue and Green LATE – 12-hour shift running from 10am to 10pm covered by two watches of Orange and Purple Tettenhall is the only solely late crewed station. Following the closure of the Birmingham Central fire station, Birmingham city centre is now covered by three fire stations: Aston located and covering the northern side, Highgate located and covering the southern, central and eastern sides, and Ladywood covering the western side. WMFS currently operates a fleet of pump rescue ladders, technical rescue pumps, brigade response vehicles, aerial ladder platforms which are also referred to as Hydraulic platforms. WMFS also operate business support vehicles in addition to various specialist appliances and transport vehicles. Specialist units Technical Rescue Unit Operating out of three locations, a primary base at Bickenhill fire station and two other bases at Wednesbury and Sutton Coldfield fire stations, the WMFS Technical Rescue Unit has purpose-built facilities to train in all specialist rescue disciplines, providing a local, regional and national response 24-hours a day, 365-days a year to any Urban Search And Rescue (USAR)/widescale flooding incident as well as the support necessary for specialist rescue incidents. The team is made up of a Station Commander, Administration Officer, Equipment Maintenance Officer, USAR Training Officer, Search Dog Handler, and four watches each made up of a Watch Commander, Crew Commander and six Technicians. A further four watches are based at Wednesbury. With shifts running along with the same colour watches as the core fire crews, watch based personnel work a 96-hour duty period with 48 hours on full duty and the remainder on the retained cover. Retained personnel can respond to base within 30 minutes of being required for multiple incident deployment. The unit makes use of a wide range of vehicles and equipment to carry out their role. Each TRU base has two primary response vehicles: Technical Rescue Support Unit – this 4x4 Mercedes Sprinter van provides a fast response capability for water, rope, and large animal rescues to get initial personnel and equipment to an incident as fast as possible. Technical Response Pump – based on a modified Volvo FL Pump Rescue Relay, this appliance carries enhanced rescue equipment at the expense