Special Service incidents can fall into many different categories depending upon the nature of the incidents. For example, this could be a road traffic collision, flooding, animal rescue or assisting other agencies. For information on what these categories consist of please visit our page 'Incident Types We Attend'. The information below describes the number and types of false alarms County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service has attended in previous years. Please note that in April 2009 the national incident recording system (IRS) was introduced by our governing body. This new national system required all fire and rescue services to record and submit details of every incident they attend in detail. Prior to April 2009 much less detailed information was submitted. This new system also contains specific guidance on how to categorise incidents. As a result of this greater detail and further guidance some disparity exits between statistics prior and post April 2009. Also, some of the incident subtypes are not the same and IRS contains many more subtypes.