 AP Photo/Simon Dawson Firefighters stand outside Mile End tube station, London, after a tube derailed in July. |
In future articles, I will be discussing many areas of firefighting, command and general fire matters in the UK in the hope of sharing some of our better procedures — and learning where we have failings.
But let me start by introducing you to firefighting in the UK and my department, the London Fire Brigade.
The UK is covered by 63 fire authorities. The largest is London, with 112 fire stations, 7,000 personnel and 242 fire apparatus, while the smallest is the Isle of Wight Fire Brigade, off the south coast of England, with just 10 stations and 250 personnel. An average sized UK fire brigade will have about 40 fire stations and 2-3,000 personnel.
Breaking things down further, there are seven metropolitan brigades, which are are brigades that cover large urban areas such as London, Manchester and the West Midlands. Most of the stations here are staffed by wholetime — full-time/career — firefighters working a shift system.
In addition, there are a number of unitary authorities, where a county — the loose equivalent of a U.S. state — has a large city within it that used to be a fire brigade in its own right, such as Bedfordshire and Luton Fire Brigade.
The remainder are county fire brigades. They can range from counties that have a majority of wholetime stations and a few retained — the equivalent of volunteer — stations and vice versa.
No gaps
One fire brigade or another covers all of the UK; there are no gaps in cover where firefighting is not provided. An organized brigade covers every square inch of land. Retained stations in a brigade have the same trucks and equipment as wholetime stations, and even the same chiefs. The only difference is they are not manned by wholetime firefighters.
In a small village, a number of residents are employed as retained firefighters, carrying pagers to alert them to when they are needed. They are trained to the same standard as career/wholetime firefighters but are employed by the local fire brigade on a part-time basis. In the event of an emergency within the community, they have to respond to the fire station and turn out like regular firefighters.
There are more than 2,000 fire stations in the UK and 68,000 personnel who are comprised of 38,000 wholetime firefighters and chiefs, 18,500 retained firefighters, 2,000 control/dispatch staff and 10,000 administrative workers.
These numbers are necessary because while the UK may only be the same size as Oregon, it’s largely an urbanized area, one of the most densely packed in the world with more than 60 million people squeezed into it. The UK’s 60,000 firefighters attend more than 1 million incidents every year, broken down into 430,000 fires, 443,000 false alarms and 177,000 special service calls, Statistically speaking, it makes us about the busiest in the world.
My department
London, the UK’s largest city, is 620 square miles, compared to the 322 square miles of New York, and has a population of about 8 million people
 AP Photo/Sang Tan Firefighters spray water onto a burning building connected to the Royal Academy of Art, London, in August last year. |
It’s the third biggest brigade in the world, behind Tokyo and New York, with 7,000 personnel responding from 112 wholetime stations. The LFB responds to about 300,000 calls per year. Of these, 50,000 are reported as fires of which around 16,000 are serious requiring further appliances/further alarms. However, unlike departments in the United States, the LFB does not respond to medical emergencies. That is the job of the London Ambulance Service, again one of the busiest and biggest in the world.
London is a very unique city. Its closest relative is probably New York in terms of its range of business, entertainment and multicultural demography. While London is almost twice the size of New York, it’s less densely populated in the outer areas.
The LFB is headed by a Commissioner. Below him/her is the Deputy Commissioner and then six Assistant Commissioners. Each of these heads up various areas of the LFB:
- Training and development
- Operational response (dispatch, risk information etc.)
- Operational planning (procedures, inter-agency liaison, terrorism response)
- Community fire safety and statutory fire safety
- Service delivery (the firefighting)
Below the ACs are 17 Senior Divisional Officers. Some assist the five departmental ACs, while the remainder are responsible for the groups of boroughs that make up London.
They then have between three to seven Assistant Divisional Officers (Battalion Chiefs) depending on the size and amount of stations within the borough. DOs and ADOs also have roles within the various departments, although every senior officer from an ADO up to the Commissioner has an Operational Command Role.
A typical London Fire Station has two fire appliances, the Pump Ladder and the Pump. They are virtually identical, but while a Pump Ladder carries a 45 ft ladder and a set of Holmatro cutting gear, the Pump carries a 35 ft ladder and a portable pump for firefighting in inaccessible areas. They ride with a crew of between four and six.
Each of these stations typically has 53 personnel, who are divided into four shift groups known as Watches — red, white, blue and green. Each Watch is commanded by a Station Officer (Captain) who rides in charge of the PL, while the deputy is a Sub Officer (lieutenant). Then, there is one Leading Firefighter and ten firefighters.
The Pump is first due on every call, and turns out alone for minor emergencies such as rubbish and car fires, persons stuck in elevators and minor floodings. For any other incident, both the PL and Pump respond as well as a Pump from another Station and an Aerial in Central areas. In Central London, three appliances and an aerial have to respond; the first two to arrive within five and the next within eight minutes.
Multi-disciplined approach
British firefighters, in common with most around the world — apart from countries such as the United States and Canada — respond as a complete multi-disciplined approach, not as specific engine or truck companies.
 AP Photo/Sergio Dionisio Fire and emergency services work outside a tube station in London after it was was evacuated on July 21, 2005, following four attempted bombings in the city. |
At the scene, because most of our buildings are fireproof, we tend to launch our initial attack with a high pressure hosereel — booster — from the 500-Gallon Tank Supply. This is then augmented from a hydrant with twin lines of two-and-a- half inch hose. No one enters without a water supply, and where more than a single room is involved an inch-and-a-half line is laid out in support. Rescue/ventilation teams are also committed at the same time.
Station Officers and Sub Officers are in command of any incident up to four Pumps; five to six are led by ADOs; DOs have incidents between seven and 10; SDOs lead incidents of 10 to 15 pumps and an AC is in charge of 15 and over, although the DC or Commissioner can take over if they wish, as the most senior officer present. Each IC is monitored by an officer one rank above him on all incidents over three pumps or where persons are confirmed involved.
One of the biggest issues with UK firefighting is firefighter safety. Even in London, with 7,000 personnel, we amazingly managed to go 11 years without a LODD from 1993 to 2004, when two firefighters were killed in a backdraft in the basement of a shop and dwellings. We attribute this to our high standard of incident management and safety systems.
For example, no one goes into a building in CABA — SCBA — until the IC orders it. And even then, every person is booked in, with the amount of air, their time of whistle (low air whistle) and their location noted on a BA entry control board.
One of the main roles of firefighters in London is to educate the community to the dangers of fire through our extensive Community Fire safety program.
Each year the LFB along with our partners from housing groups, charities etc. commit to carry out 65,000 home fire safety visits where we carry out a full risk assessment of the property and fit one or more smoke detectors of required. Thirty-thousand of these visits are carried out by the crews at the stations, the remainder by our partners.
Alongside all of this work, crews still have to spend at least six hours of their four-day tour carrying out training and also carrying out inspections of industrial or commercial premises so we are aware of the risks inside of those properties to try to protect our crews if an incident should occur.
What little time is left is spent in the station; there is a great canteen culture just like in the U.S. Fire Service where things are discussed around the mess table, jokes are played, balls are broken, incidents are debriefed and problems are shared.