Essex County Fire and Rescue Service

Essex County Fire and Rescue Service

Operational area
Country	England
County	Essex
Address	Kelvedon Park, Witham
Agency overview
Established	1 April 1948; 76 years ago (1948-04-01)
Annual calls	~14,000 incidents
Employees	1,448
Annual budget	£70.1 million
Chief Fire Officer	Rick Hylton
Facilities and equipment
Stations	50
Website
www.essex-fire.gov.uk

Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (ECFRS) is the statutory fire and rescue service for the county of Essex in the east of England, and is one of the largest fire services in the country, covering an area of 1,338 square miles (3,470 km²) and a population of over 1.7 million people.^[1]

In 2015, the service attended around 14,000 emergency incidents within the year, mostly fires and road traffic collisions (RTC). Additionally, lift releases, effecting entry into buildings, flooding incidents and animal rescues are also incidents dealt with by ECFRS. However, around 40 percent of these incidents are false alarms and require no further action. Between 2004 and 2014, the number of incidents attended by ECFRS decreased significantly by around 50 percent, with around 38 calls per day, compared to around 77 calls per day in 2004.^[2]

ECFRS employs 1,448 staff: 620 full-time firefighters, 519 retained firefighters, 33 control personnel and 240 support staff.^[3]

There are 50 fire stations in Essex, 12 of which are crewed by wholetime firefighters, or by wholetime and retained firefighters, and are generally located in the more densely populated areas. The remaining 38 stations are staffed by retained firefighters, and tend to be found in smaller towns and villages. Essex used to operate four day-crewed fire stations, located at Dovercourt (Harwich), South Woodham Ferrers, Great Baddow and Waltham Abbey, but, following a 2016 consultation,^[4] these have been changed to retained-only status. ECFRS has 66 pumping appliances and 27 specialist appliances within its frontline operational fleet.

Major risks covered include Stansted and Southend airport, Harwich seaport, Lakeside shopping centre, Tilbury Docks, London Gateway, part of the M25 and M11 motorways, A127 and A12 road and 13 top-tier COMAH sites.

As well as attending fires, traffic collisions and other rescue operations, ECFRS provides emergency response to hazardous materials incidents and has an Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team of officers with specialist training and equipment to conduct rescues from collapsed buildings and enclosed spaces. The USAR team has its own fire station separate from others across the county, ECFRS being the first to do this in the country. One of their resources include a search dog trained to locate people trapped in rubble. Another primary role of the service is preventive community safety work; in 2010, ECFRS fitted over 7,000 smoke alarms in houses across the county.^[1]