UK Firefighters Lives at Great Risk - April 2008
'Our peacetime firefighters have never been at greater risk when fighting structure fires than they are today! ...Firefighter life losses in the UK are currently at their highest rate for over 30 years! Our firefighters have never been so at risk as they are now but the situation is going to get much worse, with massive depletion of resources being proposed. Modernization is now in full swing and the predictions made on this very web site in 2002 (HERE), in response to the 'Bain report', are now being seen.

Author of Euro Firefighter Paul Grimwood reports ....

Since 1991 I have openly written about a British Fire Service in decline. Critical resources being depleted, the reduction of a national aerial ladder fleet, increasing workloads and a reduction in staffing to carry out that work. However, this sad demise in service provision is now having a dramatic effect on the firefighting force itself.

Statistically, prior to 2004, the UK Fire Service incurred traumatic operational fatalities at a fairly consistent average of about one firefighter per year per 100,000 structure fires. However, during the period 2004-2007 the life losses have dramatically increased to 2.7 firefighters per 100,000 structure fires. That is one firefighter fatality for every 37,000-structure fires. The death rate has almost trebled. We used to be proud of our 'safety' record but our average annual firefighter life loss rate (per 100,000 fires) is now higher than that in the USA!

In the USA the traumatic death rate amongst firefighters demonstrates that 1.9 firefighters are killed per year, per 100,000 structure fires (a rate only slightly lower than that observed in the early 1980s), although this rate was at its highest (3.0 per 100,000 structure fires) across a thirty-year period, peaking in the 1990s. The main causes of these LODD (Line of Duty Deaths) are smoke inhalation; burns; crushing injuries and related trauma. Most importantly, both the UK and US statistics provided above are strictly related to firefighting operations and exclude all other causes of death, such as heart attacks and road accidents en-route etc.

Various tactical and command failings have directly evolved from a triangle of complacency that is now rife amongst the British Fire Service.

         1. Lack of firefighting experience
         2. Inadequate firefighter and command training
         3. Complacency (Lack of discipline)

There are also a dozen clear tactical failings that, as a result of inadequate training provision, can be seen over and again leading to problems on the fire-ground.

1. Failure to confine the fire until a charged hose-line is in place
2. Failure to deploy resources effectively
3. Failure to provide adequate flow-rate at the primary attack nozzle
4. Failure to effectively brief crews prior to deployment
5. Deviation from documented operating procedure without good reason
6. Failure to implement tactical venting actions in the right place at the right time
7. Failure to provide a back-up support hose-line
8. Failure to communicate effectively
9. Failure to apply safe BA working practices
10. Failure to undertake effective search patterns
11. Failure to establish a tactical mode (offensive/defensive) at the outset
12. Failure to establish effective command & control from the outset

Fire Cover Computer Models

We now see the UK national fire cover being assessed by experts using computer models based on life risk - wonderful! Only that is NOT firefighter life risk! We also see the first dramatic moves to reduce staffing complements on fire engines.

These 'experts' play with computer models, taking all the fire engines out of the equation, then noting how civilian life losses increase slightly in an area. Imagine ... an area without any fire cover whatsoever but the life losses through fire are not as dramatic as one would imagine! Then they put half the fire engines back into an area and note that civilian life losses return to 'normal' (almost the same as if we had the current complement of staffing and resources/engines). 'Why do we need so many fire engines'? These learned people ask! 'Why do we need so many fire stations'?! 'What about firefighters ... we can cut staffing by thousands and still maintain civilian life losses around the rate that would normally be expected!!

Has anyone considered the effect this will have on those few firefighters who remain in service!

Halve the resources and firefighters are placed under even greater stress. Their job is dangerous enough now. Firefighters are already attending fires in tall buildings and other situations understaffed and this planned depletion in resources will drain any ability to work within safe systems of work.

The firefighter life losses will continue to increase over the next decade.

Unless .... we stand outside .... and go defensive from the outset .... and 'squirt' water through windows. Well the civilian life loss statistics might go up slightly but look how much money we have saved!

Whatever happened to the co-responder programs where other civilian life losses will be reduced by getting fire engines out to heart attack victims within that critical five minute period! Why haven't they built that into their 'models'!

Then there is the deceit being used to produce life loss statistics in the first place! Are we seeing the REAL situation? See article HERE

Another area of great concern is the provision of firefighting water supplies. There is a false belief common in the UK fire service that we can fight compartment fires more effectively by resorting to CFBT tactics, using LESS water than was needed before. Less water distributed more effectively in the fire gas layers suppresses fires even quicker than large amounts of water directed at the fire's base. This is ridiculous! The original CFBT programs were never meant to see a reduction in needed flow-rate but rather a more optimized use of the firefighting stream. 

Minimum flow-rates are already dangerously low (230 litres/min measured national average from a 45mm hose-line). (NB. France and the USA have adopted minimum firefighting flow-rates by law of at least twice that rate - in the UK there is no established minimum flow-rate and 'safe systems of work' are at great risk). Now the modernization (cost cutting) program is seeing moves to cut the number of fire hydrants dramatically. This will force reducing numbers of firefighters to fight fires using limited 'on-board' water supplies as the hydrant grid is reduced, utilizing flow-rates well below internationally accepted safe minimums. There are further issues with inadequate rising main installations and inappropriate placement of smoke shafts sited in some 'firefighting' shafts. All these issues will surface in time to cause further problems for the under-resourced fire service.

The British Fire Service, along with the society it protects, is facing a worrying future.

Take part in, or view, a live on-line debate of this topic in the OPERATIONAL TACTICS section HERE