Operational Resource Disposition
Background and Research
The proposals are the results of almost four years of research and analysis by a team of experienced officers who between them have accumulated over 200 years of operational experience.
First of all they worked out how quickly and how many fire engines should be sent to the various types of emergency that we are called to – these are called intervention standards.
What Standards Did We Set?
More people lose their lives in fires in their homes than in any other type of fire so the first set of standards we set were for fires in dwellings.
We set standards based on risk assessment so that those at greatest risk receive the highest intervention standard – for dwellings 2 fire engines will be sent, the first should arrive within the following times:-
| Very High and High Risk areas | Within 8 minutes on 90% of occasions |
| Medium Risk areas | Within 12 minutes on 90% of occasions |
| Low Risk areas | Within 20 minutes on 90% of occasions |
The risk team then analysed our Service area for dwelling fire risk.
We broke the area down into small regions and then used 7 factors to assess the risk in these regions – the factors that we used were:-
- The rate of dwelling fires over a 5 year period
- The fire casualty rate over the same period
- The fire fatality rate over the same period
We also used census data that provided us with information on groups of people who are vulnerable in fires. They are those regions with a high proportion of:-
- Lone Pensioners
- Single Parent Families
- People with Limiting Long Term Illnesses
- Rented Accommodation
We then mapped our findings so that we could apply the intervention standards to determine the required fire cover arrangements. The map on the following page shows our risk assessment:-
- We have set a standard for fires in “Other Buildings” that is buildings other than dwellings for example hotels, offices, factories, shops etc.
- This standard is based on risk assessing the buildings in an area using fire safety principles and feeding the information into a computer database.
- The FSEC computer program then works out those areas where a risk exists that is higher than normal.
- The guidance for the intervention standard for “other buildings” requires a fire and rescue service to initiate multiple rescues within 10 minutes of receipt of a call for those areas with a high risk, for all other areas the dwelling fire standard is considered to be suitable.
- In Humberside there is only one of these areas this is shown on the map below.
- For buildings other than dwellings in this area we will send 3 fire engines the first two should arrive within 7 minutes on 90% of occasions
This map was generated by the FSEC computer program. The red area shows the “other buildings” high risk area in Humberside.
Major Incidents
Occasionally Major Incidents occur. These are rare events where considerable resources of several organisations may have to be brought together to deal with an emergency or where one organisation may have to commit a high proportion of their resources to deal with an incident.
There are few guidelines for risk managers to work to so ours have had to draw on their wealth of experience to draw up a standard for these occasions.
The key to resolving major incidents lies not with the ability to have several fire engines arriving at an emergency within a few minutes of each other but with having the timely arrival of crews who can accurately assess an incident and then call upon reinforcements that are reasonably close by.
With this in mind we have set a standard to ensure that there are sufficient resources available in our Service area so we require that 10 fire engines will arrive at the incident within 45 minutes of a major incident being declared.
Road Traffic Collisions
Although fire engines have been sent to road crashes for many years we have only recently had a legal requirement to provide a rescue service.
There is little guidance on setting standards for these incidents so the risk team used their professional judgement and applied a principle called “The Golden Hour”. That says if a casualty in an accident can receive treatment in hospital within one hour they stand a much greater chance of survival.
We based our standard on allowing 15 minutes to get to the incident, 30 minutes to rescue the casualty and then a further 15 minutes to get the casualty to hospital.
Our standard for Road Traffic Collisions (RTC’s) is to send 2 fire engines the first should arrive within 15 minutes on 90% of occasions.
Second Fire Engines
With our firefighters safety in mind we have also set an ambitious target for the arrival time for the second fire engine sent to an emergency at the same time as the first.
Firefighters are often called upon to enter buildings on fire wearing breathing apparatus.
These occasions are very strictly controlled but we wanted to ensure that additional firefighters are on hand to help should the first crew get into difficulty.
We therefore require second fire engines to be in attendance within 5 minutes of the arrival of the first fire engine on 80% of occasions.
In Summary
Our approved standards are:-
| Dwelling Fires High and Very High Risk | 8 minutes on 90% of occasions |
| Dwelling Fires Medium Risk | 12 minutes on 90% of occasions |
| Dwelling Fires Low Risk | 20 minutes on 90% of occasions |
| RTC’s | 15 minutes on 90% of occasions |
| "Societal Risk" Other Buildings | 2 pumps in 7 minutes on 90% of occasions |
| Major Incidents | 10 pumps within 45 minutes of declaration |
| Second Pump Attendance | Within 5 minutes of the arrival of the first appliance on 80% of occasions |
More Information
The links to the right allow anyone to read the document and contribute to the related survey. Additionally each link below is to a page containing further information about the proposals.
The Benefits of the proposals.
Information about the background and research of the proposals.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) and answers.
More information is available in this series of PDF presentations about the Operational Resource Disposition proposal for each location.
Click here to go back to the Operational Resource Disposition homepage.