Essex County Fire and Rescue Service


Essex County Fire and Rescue Service is the statutory fire and rescue service for the county of Essex in the east of England, and is one of the largest fire services in the country, covering an area of 1,338 square miles and a population of over 1.7 million people.
In 2015, the service attended around 14,000 emergency incidents within the year, mostly fires and road traffic collisions. Additionally, lift releases, effecting entry into buildings, flooding incidents and animal rescues are also incidents dealt with by ECFRS. However, around 40 percent of these incidents are false alarms and require no further action. Between 2004 and 2014 the number of incidents attended by ECFRS decreased significantly by around 50 percent, with around 38 calls per day, compared to around 77 calls per day in 2004.
ECFRS employs 1,448 staff: 620 full-time firefighters, 519 retained firefighters, 33 control personnel and 240 support staff.
There are 50 fire stations in Essex, 12 of which are wholetime and generally located in the more densely populated areas; 34 are retained and 4 are day-crewed. ECFRS have 74 frontline fire appliances, with between 55 and 70 available for mobilisation at any moment.
Major risks covered include Stansted and Southend airport, Harwich seaport, Lakeside shopping centre, Coryton oil refinery, power stations and docks at Tilbury and part of the M25 and M11 motorways, A127 and A12 road.
As well as attending fires, traffic collisions and other rescue operations, ECFRS provides emergency response to hazardous materials incidents and has an Urban Search and Rescue team of officers with specialist training and equipment to conduct rescues from collapsed buildings and enclosed spaces. The Urban Search and Rescue team have their own fire station separate from others across the county, ECFRS being the first to do this in the country. One of their resources include a search dog trained to locate people trapped in rubble. Another primary role of the service is preventive community safety work; in 2010 ECFRS fitted over 7,000 smoke alarms in houses across the county.

Organisation

ECFRS's headquarters is located in Kelvedon. The Service is divided into four Groups:
  1. North East Group
  2. North West Group
  3. South East Group
  4. South West Group
The Chief Fire Officer/Chief Executive is Jo Turton.
On 1 October 2017, governance of ECFRS was transferred from the Essex Fire Authority to the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, Roger Hirst. It was made very clear, that both Essex Police and ECFRS would retain their Chief Officers, however the new PFCC would have overlying governance over the two, and the Chief Officers would answer to the PFCC. Essex were the first to do this in the country.
The Emergency Operational Fire Control is situated in the headquarters at Kelvedon. 33 control staff handle over 14,000 999 emergency calls. The control staff also carry out incident co-ordination, appliance mobilisation and movements to ensure strategic fire cover. Radio communications are made between incidents and Fire Control, and control staff liaise with other emergency services to provide additional resources when requested by firefighting personnel. Emergency calls are handled on an average of 54 seconds from the time of answering the call, to the time of dispatching the fire crew.
There are five firefighter training centres, located in Basildon, Chelmsford, Orsett, Witham and Wethersfield. Each of these centres specialise in different forms of training firefighters must become accustomed to, in order to be operationally prepared.
The Service workshop is in Lexden, Colchester, where the operational fleet of frontline fire appliances and specialist appliances are maintained, and the reserve fleet of spare appliances are stored.
In 2016, the Service started a co-responding scheme with the East of England Ambulance Service, whereby fire crews would respond to life-threatening cardiac emergencies, alongside ambulances, in a way to ease pressure off the ambulance service, and grant better survival for patients. Fire Stations that partook in the scheme were: Basildon, Frinton, Ongar, Newport, Coggeshall and Colchester. However, in 2017, the co-responding scheme ceased due to disputes between the union and the Service. Regardless, the Service still have close relations with the ambulance service, and on a daily basis, fire crews work with partners like paramedics and police officers efficiently.

Appliances

ECFRS has the following fire appliances in operation:
USAR appliances, based at Lexden, include:
The Service's driving school is at Chelmsford, and is home to three Emergency Fire Appliance Driving pumps and two multi-purpose driver training lorries.
Training centres at Wethersfield and Witham each have at least two designated training pumps.
As of 2015, the Service announced they would be purchasing brand new fire appliances to replace existing appliances in Essex. Under a money-saving purchasing agreement with Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, 44 new Angloco Scania appliances are being rolled out to fire stations across Essex over the span of 4 years. They will replace: Heavy Rescue Pumps, Rescue Pumps and Water Tenders.

Roles

In 2016, it was announced that the service will change its rank based structure, to a role based structure, commonly known as 'rank to role'. This process was part of the Peoples Structures Project in the 2016-2020 Essex County Fire and Rescue Service report. This new role based structure is highly popular among many fire services in the country, and suits the modern and flexible requirement of a fire service. This process did not hugely effect the staff and their roles, however did require changes to some Sub Officer's based station of work, in order for the process to be implemented. The service was one of the last organisations to implement 'rank to role'.

Performance

In 2010, the service responded to the scene within an average of 8 minutes 56 seconds, and 93% within 15 minutes.
In 2014, the service responded to the scene within an average of 9 minutes 10 seconds, and 91% within 15 minutes.
When the control operator receives an emergency call, the average time it took to identify the emergency and allocate the right resources was between 70–80 seconds. For wholetime crews, a turnout took on average 2 minutes to be ready for mobilisation. For on-call crews, a turnout took on average 4 minutes 30 seconds to be ready for mobilisation.

Fire Stations

*
Fire Station
Fire Station
This is a complete list of the service's 50 fire stations, appliances allocated to them, and number of emergency callouts received in 2016:
StationNumberDuty systemStandard appliancesSpecialist appliancesCallouts in 2016
BasildonW52Wholetime211,509
BillericayW68Retained11334
BraintreeW78Retained21477
BrentwoodW51Wholetime & Retained20783
BrightlingseaE20Retained1085
BurnhamE43Retained1059
Canvey IslandW54Retained20290
ChelmsfordE34Wholetime211,272
ClactonE12Wholetime & Retained21698
CoggeshallE24Retained11166
ColchesterE10Wholetime211,296
CorringhamW66Retained11228
DovercourtE11Day crewed20185
DunmowW87Retained20368
EppingW89Retained10306
FrintonE18Retained20220
GraysW50Wholetime211,218
Great BaddowE33Day crewed10409
HalsteadW81Retained21271
HarlowW70Wholetime211,084
HawkwellE47Retained10186
IngatestoneW67Retained10111
Leaden RodingW88Retained1069
LeighE31Wholetime11744
LoughtonW72Wholetime10754
MaldonE46Retained21319
ManningtreeE17Retained11137
NewportW84Retained10190
Old HarlowW82Retained10179
OngarW71Retained1096
OrsettW55Wholetime11881
Rayleigh WeirE35Wholetime12929
RochfordE49Retained10202
Saffron WaldenW85Retained20203
ShoeburynessE42Retained10232
Sible HedinghamW80Retained1041
South Woodham FerrersE32Day crewed12225
SouthendE30Wholetime211,348
StanstedW83Retained12221
ThaxtedW86Retained1058
TillinghamE44Retained1085
TiptreeE23Retained10171
TollesburyE45Retained1048
Waltham AbbeyW73Day crewed11350
WeeleyE19Retained10166
West MerseaE22Retained1177
WethersfieldW79Retained1079
WickfordW69Retained10194
WithamW25Retained20344
WivenhoeE21Retained10141

Southend Fire Station is also home to the UK's first dedicated Young Firefighters' Centre, opened in July 2010.

Urban Search and Rescue Team (USAR)

State-of-the-art equipment, multi-purpose vehicles, a search and rescue dog and a purpose-built base staffed with a highly trained and experienced team comprise the county's urban search and rescue team.
The team is equipped to rescue victims trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings, or major transport accidents, for example. They are able to locate and safely extract trapped person, and can shore up unstable buildings so that firefighters can continue with rescue operations.
The USAR team are equipped with prime movers, specialist hook-lift vehicles that can be loaded with one of five different equipment pods, depending on what situation the team are going to face. These pods include hose layers and high-volume pumps, technical rescue, timber for shoring up unstable structures, and even a multi-purpose skid loader that can access tight spaces, explore voids, and move heavy loads of debris.
Following the September 11 attacks new risks were identified for which rescue services would need to be better prepared, and the British government responded with the announcement that USAR units were to be established throughout the country. The Lexden base became the UK's first such facility.
ECFRS was chosen as one of the 17 strategically suitable services partly because it already had 14 officers trained in urban rescue, members of the UK Fire Service Safety & Rescue Team who were part of the rescue effort that was sent to Bam in Iran after it was hit by a major earthquake in December 2003 where they helped in the search for victims amongst the ruins of the ancient city.
The station commander at Lexden, a specialist co-ordinator of search and rescue operations, was also sent with the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to Haiti in January 2010 after a major earthquake struck the country.
In February 2011, six ECFRS firefighters, including two from the USAR unit at Lexden, joined the UK's International Search and Rescue team sent to assist with rescue efforts in New Zealand's second city Christchurch after an earthquake hit the region.
In April 2015, six firefighters and rescue dog have been deployed to Nepal to join a team of 67 search and rescue and medical experts to help and look for earthquake survivors.
Formed in 1992, the UK's team comprises specialist search and rescue officers drawn from 13 brigades who are on call 24 hours a day. The ECFRS team's primary role is urban search and rescue but it has also trained and involved in water rescue and working at height.

Cross-county assistance

ECFRS assisted in the emergency response to floods in Oxfordshire in 2007, where seven firefighters from the Swift Water Rescue team helped rescue victims trapped by the floods with a specialist fireboat.
Essex was also one of 16 brigades called in to attend the Buncefield oil depot fire near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, in December 2005. Fire appliances from Orsett, Hadleigh, Harlow, and foam appliances from Grays, Maldon and Epping assisted in operations at the largest ever blaze in peacetime Britain.