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Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (ECFRS) is the statutory FRS (fire and rescue service) for the county of Essex in the southeast of England, and is one of the largest FRSs in the country, with a patch covering almost 400,000 hectares and a population of over 1½ million people. In 2005, ECFRS attended a total of 24,291 emergency incidents, mostly made up of fires and road traffic collisions.[1] It employs 1,768 staff, comprised of 967 full-time firefighters, 524 retained firefighters (those who have other full-time jobs but attend incidents on a call-out basis) and 277 support staff at control, training, workshop and service locations. There are 52 fire stations throughout Essex consisting of 19 full-time stations, located in the more densely populated centres, and 33 retained stations providing cover throughout the rest of the county. Major risks covered include Stansted and Southend airports, Lakeside shopping centre, BP's oil refinery at Coryton, docks at Tilbury and part of the M25 and M11 motorways. As well as attending fires, road traffic collisions and other rescue operations, ECFRS also provides emergency response to hazardous material incidents and provides one of the UK's urban search and rescue (USAR) teams - a team of officers with special training and equipment to conduct rescues from collapsed buildings and enclosed spaces. Their resources include Darcy, the USAR dog, who has been trained to sniff out people trapped in rubble. Another primary role of the Service is preventative community safety work.
OrganisationECFRS Headquarters is based in Kelvedon. In 2002 the FRS was divided into seven Community Commands, to reflect the increasing need for the fire service to work in closer contact with communities. They are:
The Chief Fire Officer is David Johnson, since July 2005. The Emergency Operational Fire Control is situated in Hutton. Over 60,000 emergency calls and several hundered thousand administrative calls are taken by control staff every year. The control staff also carry out incident co-ordination, appliance movements to ensure strategic fire cover, movement of personnel and advanced call handling to give life protecting advice via the telephone. Radio communications are made between incidents and Fire Control and Control staff liaise with other services and provide additional resources when requested by firefighting personnel. The administrative centre for the service is also based at Hutton. ECFRS intends to move to a regional 999 centre in 2011, and is currently in the phase of moving its headquarters to Kelvedon Park. There are training centres at Chelmsford, Orsett, Witham and Wethersfield. Service Workshops are based in Lexden, Colchester, and it is here that the operational fleet of 71 frontline appliances and 20 specialist appliances are maintained, and the reserve fleet of about 15 spare appliances are stored. AppliancesECFRS has the following firefighting appliances in operation:
The front line appliances currently in operation are a combination of Dennis Rapiers, Daggers, Sabres and Sabre XLs; and since 2004 the newer appliances have been Scania 94Ds and P270s. There is still one Dennis RS in the reserve fleet. Specialised appliances:
USAR appliances:
The Service's driving school is at Chelmsford, and is home to 4 emergency fire appliance driving (EFAD) pumps and 2 mutli-purpose training lorries. Fire stationsThis is a complete list of Essex fire stations, and the appliances allocated to them:
Urban Search and Rescue teamState-of-the-art equipment, multi-purpose vehicles, a sniffer dog and a purpose-built base staffed with a highly-trained and experienced team are the elements which comprise the County’s Urban Search and Rescue Team. The USAR team is equipped to deal with incidents in which victims have become trapped in rubble of collapsed buildings, and major transport accidents. They will be able to locate and safely extract any trapped persons, or in the event of possible collapse can shore up unstable buildings so that firefighters can continue with rescue operations. The USAR team are equipped with Prime Movers, specialist hooklift vehicles that can be loaded with one of five 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 unstable structures, and even a small multi-purpose vehicle which can access tight spaces, explore voids, and move heavy loads of debris. But it is not all high-tech equipment; there is also a 'back to basics' approach offered by Darcy the search dog, who has been trained to sniff out trapped people. Following the September 11th 2001 attacks on US cities, new risks were shown to the world for which rescue services would need to be better prepared, and the British government responded with the announcement that Urban Search & Rescue teams were to be established around 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, Iran after it was hit by a devastating earthquake in December 2003 where they helped in the search for victims amongst the ruins of the ancient city. Fatal Warwickshire warehouse fire 2007ECFRS was one of a number of brigades to assist in urban search and rescue for three missing firefighters of the Warwickshire Fire & Rescue Service following a large warehouse fire. The incident included the worst loss of life for 30 years in the UK, with four firefighters killed. Oxfordshire floods 2007ECFRS 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. Buncefield Oil Depot fire 2005Essex was one of 16 brigades called in to attend the large oil depot fire near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, in December 2005, the largest blaze ever in peacetime in the UK. Fire appliances from Orsett, Hadleigh, Harlow, and foam appliances from Grays, Maldon and Epping attended. See alsoReferencesExternal links
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