Incident Types We Attend

All incidents fall into the following groups;

  1. Fire
  2. Special Service
  3. False alarms

The Home Office regard any call received by the Command and Control where a subsequent attendance is made as an incident.  If an attendance is not made to a call this is not regarded as an incident.  An example would be a malicious call and no attendance is made.  As a result no Incident Recording System (IRS) report is required.  All calls are however recorded within the mobilising system and MIS for statistical purposes.

All incidents attended by the Service are recorded within the IRS and are all electronically uploaded to the Home Office who maintain the national IRS which records all incidents attended by all Fire and Rescue Services in the UK.

Fire

Primary Fire - includes all fires in buildings, vehicles and most outdoor structures or any fire involving casualties, rescues or fires attended by five or more pumping appliances.

Secondary Fire – are reportable fires that:

  • Were not chimney fires;
  • Did not occur at primary locations (unless derelict);
  • Did not involve casualties, rescues or escapes;
  • Were attended by four or fewer pumping appliances.

Chimney fire - any fires in buildings where the fire was contained within the chimney structure and did not involve casualties, rescues or attendance by five or more pumping appliances.

Special Services

Non-fire incidents which require the attendance of an appliance or officer and include:

  • Local emergencies e.g. road traffic incidents, rescue of persons, 'making safe' etc.;
  • Major disasters;
  • Domestic incidents e.g. water leaks, persons locked in or out etc.;
  • Prior arrangements to attend incidents, which may include some provision of advice and inspections.

Some of our Services will incur charges, details of which can be found in the document below:

 

False Alarms

Malicious False Alarms - calls made with the intention of getting the FRS to attend a non-existent incident, including deliberate and suspected malicious intentions.

Good Intent False Alarms - calls made in good faith by a member of the public in the belief that the FRS really would attend an incident.

False Alarm due to Apparatus - calls initiated by fire alarm and fire-fighting equipment operating (including accidental initiation of alarm apparatus by persons or where an alarm operates and a person then routinely calls the FRS as part of a standing arrangement, i.e. with no ‘judgment’ involved, for example from a security call centre or a nominated person in an organisation).

Special Service False Alarm Good Intent - calls made in good faith in the belief that the FRS really would attend a special service incident.

For the purpose of the IRS, Fire incidents take precedence over any other type of incident.   e.g. if an attendance was made to an RTC (special service) which then developed into a fire incident, then the incident would be recorded as a fire.