Fire and Rescue Service in Derbyshire - Case Study Example

Fire & Rescue Service in Derbyshire Many countries in the world occasionally suffer from human induced and natural calamities. These calamities always have a negative impact in the social and economic development of the country. Currently, there is evidence in the rise of susceptibility towards such disasters due to deteriorating conditions as a result of population growth, climatic change, political instability, poor infrastructure, and decline in the world economy. One of the most common calamities is fire outbreak. A fire outbreak always leads to properties destruction and loss of lives. This destruction and loss of lives brings down the country economy especially the economy in the affected areas. The common types of fires that occur in UK are industrial fires, forest fires, grassland fires, and domestic fires. The type of fire outbreak that is given a lot of attention by the county governments is domestic fires. This is because it is caused by carelessness and dangerous since it always occurs in the house. This happens for example if a smoker throws the remaining part of a cigarette to materials that can easily light up like grass or papers or dropping it in a petrol station. Of late, forest fires are becoming common and the government believed that they are caused by arsonist and human carelessness. For example, a careless person can throw the remaining of a cigarette or light a fire and after leaving the forest, he leaves the fire instead of putting it off. Once the cigarette lights, it is always accelerated by wind or shockwaves hence consuming the forest very first and causes a lot of destruction if no action is taken immediately. Industrial fires are normally caused by electric faults and workers carelessness. They are always very destructive since properties worth millions of dollars are always lost. As a result of these calamities, many countries have developed fire and rescue services, for example the Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service (DFRS). This fire rescue services sometimes take more than suppression activities in order to keep up with the demands from those who require their services. Progressive departments that deal with fire menace always take care of hazardous materials, trench collapse, an isolated space for rescue services, threats from terror groups, and swift water rescue incidents. The population in any areas of the country always expect the fire and rescue services to be always prepared to deal with any eventuality incase of an outbreak. The department of rescue services should be prepared and committed to totally offer the community quality service that involves well trained personnel with the modern equipments that can handle emergencies in case it arises. In many counties in UK, many fire rescue departments offer quality services to their customers, but in the case of Derby county division of fire and rescue services, it is a bit different since the department lacks community risk reduction programs and preparedness for swift water rescue, that is one of their weakness since water is always one of the most important materials used to stop fire incase of an outbreak and community risk reduction programs helps to reduce the probability of any disaster happening. This problem is as a result of the department workers not being well trained and equipped with water rescue equipments. The county has few rivers cutting across it hence making it difficult to get water and little has been done to improve the community risk reduction programs. Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service is made up of around 300 trained staff members that provide fire and emergency medical services together with space rescue, trench rescue, and swift water rescue. The county encompasses about 1,000 miles squares (2,600km2), its population according to the latest census result is about 956,960 people and it has about 31 fire stations. The trained staffs are supplemented by the volunteers in most of the stations. When there is a fire outbreak, the trained workers are dispatched to the affected location together with the volunteers. The workers do not have any official swift water station and it is not a must that they have swift water rescue awareness, technician or boat operations certificates. This has lead to the poor services and un-preparedness by the department. The Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service administration should find a solution to this problem of un-preparedness and development of community risk reduction programs. This can be done through employing people who are well trained in handling the water rescue equipments and getting proper equipments to be used in water services. If the department continues sending untrained people to work, they risk losing lives while trying to save others; this will end up being a double loss. A swift water rescue program would be one of the approaches the Derbyshire county should follow to avoid un-preparedness for swift water responses. The swift water training depends on the fire and rescue department willingness to invest its money and time in the training of the workers and also its willingness to work with other similar organization elsewhere. The rescue department is supposed to be prepared for any eventually even if the disaster occurs occasionally. During training for rescue services, it has been noted that chiefs who are in charge of the brigades do not attended the training and yet they are the ones who are in charge of offering the services. Driving down community risk in the society is an important strategy that is necessary for the operations of the DFRS. These strategies are framed collectively in the county by the department to form a drive that will reduce the probability and severity of undesired events like fire outbreak. The Derbyshire fire and risk service inspection department has enforced some laws that will protect the people in buildings incase of fire outbreaks. This is done to provide escapes in tall buildings, reduce the fire damaging properties and surrounding environment and reducing the risk that the fire rescue crews will encounter during the operation. For the DFRS to attain their strategy of lowering risk reduction, the department has promoted changing their ways of providing services. The new ways of providing services are attained through education, training and planning. The Derbyshire county has come up with a community safety plan and the information contained in the community safety plan include determining what is a risk; identifying where the risk occur; defining who is at risk; researching what needs to be done to bring down the risk; and undertaking the initiatives to reduce the risk. The plan will assist the DFRS to determine which risk reduction initiatives and national community fire safety campaigns will be incorporated into fire station action plans (Barr & Eversole 2003). The risk reduction initiatives applied by the DFRS include free home fire safety checks, free smoke detector fitting, school education program, arson reduction, partnership working for a safer community, and working with young people. A research conducted by the DFRS shows that fire treat to life can be reduced greatly through education about the causes and spread of fire, fire escape plans and ensuring smoke detectors are properly installed and working for it to give early detection in case of fire outbreak(Barr & Eversole 2003). Trained fire rescue services personnel frequently carry out home fire safety checks. The Derbyshire fire and rescue services have collaborated with the social services, this partnership will enable the vulnerable people in the society to call the department incase of fire outbreak. The government of UK has also provided free smoke detectors to be placed at every home. As a result of this funding, the DFRS targets to carry out over 8000 free home safety checks and install 13000 smoke detectors annually. The DFRS suggested to the commercial premises owners that they should promote site security, supports in improving waste management, and developing a good culture in the society will bring down chances of arsonist and lessen the chances of fire outbreak. Working together with the police departments will open new ways of communication. Through this strategy of community risk reduction strategy, the Derbyshire fire rescue service departments focus has made Derbyshire a safe place to work and live. The phoenix fire department (PFD) recently developed a risk reduction program known as fire kit kids. This program is designed for fire fighters crew in order to share their knowledge, enthusiasm, and experience for them to improve their motivation, knowledge, and fitness of the society youths. PFD has carried out several seminars teaching children on fire prevention, pool safety, survival behaviors, and many other important lessons that will improve their lives. This program also gives the youth’s exposure to the job of a fire fighter, the need of high level fitness, and rewards of being fit. If the PFD program continues into the future, the youths will develop into responsible citizens in future especially in managing fire outbreaks. Fire service leaders have a primary task to teach, market, and sell safety issues to the community. The lessons offered by fire educators will help one for the rest of her life. Fire rescue departments’ inspections are significant in ensuring public and fire crew safety. The impacts of risk reduction in the community is important because public safety education proactive programs serve to instructs the members of the society to take actions that will prevent loss or injury when this programs are effective it will reduce the demand of other emergency services. The greatest objective of education is to change the individual behavior towards safety hence reducing death or losses in case of fire outbreak. Cost benefit analysis is an essential step in the procedure of decision making in responding to the risk. According to (Croughy et al) the greatest difference between our initial conception of risk and a more formal treatment of it is the use of statistics to define the extent and potential cost of any exposure. He went ahead and said that the capacity to make forward looking choices about risk in relation to reward lies at the hearth of management process of all enduring successful corporations. The DFRS has developed a five step process to help its crews in addressing community risk reduction program concerns. These steps are one; conducting community analysis, this process involves identifying the fire and life safety problems and democratic characteristics of the people at the risk in the community; secondly is developing community partnership, it has been found that the most effective risk reduction efforts are those that involve the society in planning and solutions process; thirdly is creating an intervention strategy, this is a beginning of an in depth work that is important for the development of a successful fire or life safety risk reduction process. For the risk reduction efforts to be successful it should involve combined prevention interventions such as education, this will provide knowledge about the risk and how to prevent it, engineering involves the use of modern technology to come up with safer products that will modify the environment that has encountered the risk, enforcing the rules that demands the use of safety initiatives, emergency response, the department should be always prepared to respond to the society needs when a risk occur; fourth is implementing the strategy, this will involves testing the interventions actions and putting the plan into practice in the society. It is always important that the implementation process is properly coordinated and sequenced appropriately; and lastly is evaluating the results, the reason why the evaluation process should be carried out is to demonstrate that the risk reduction efforts reaches the target populations, the plan has an impact in them and it is practically reducing the loss. The evaluation plan measures the performance on different levels for example the outcome results, the impact, and process objectives. Partnership has been developed so that the society as a whole will be involved in solutions which will assist in reducing the cost. When a department assists community education, different community partners will join the effort. Society fire and life safety education is necessary to be included in the mission statement of fire departments. Community risk reduction program need a lot of research and efforts on fire departments together with a change in the philosophy. During the study, I came to learn about the components required for community risk reduction program even though DFRS had not officially put in place a community risk reduction program. In the hospitals, the doctors look at injuries that the children brought has a result of the disasters for the doctors to know whether they require car safety, a bike helmet, or a special seat in the car to prevent injuries. Doctors can also teach the children about pedestrian and bicycle injury prevention behaviors and fire prevention. A community risk reduction program requires good data on particular issues. Once these issues are determined, a plan should be developed to address those issues. It is also significant to regularly evaluate the program to see whether you are making a progress or not. A community risk reduction program should consist of members who are committed to achieve the organization goals from the chiefs to the junior officers. It is significant to be need for preventing risk in the community in a positive manner and fire crews should demonstrate more respond in an aggressive manner. Other components of community risk reduction program include education, codes and enforcement, legislative support, and risk management. The fire departments should look at the call statistics for a specific community. The departments should identify the problems in the community, choose a plan of action to be undertaken and implement the right measures and set up evaluation plan. I came to learn that there are three significant components in community risk reduction program, this are commitment, planning, and resources. Partnership should exist between firefighters and flexibility should be offered to them together with autonomy to come up with a way to look into the risk in their first due area. This program addresses the risks that are precise to the area the fire and rescue departments’ serves as its community. Money is required for posters, door hangers, and smoke detectors to make people aware of the risk involved with fire breakout. Fire disasters currently are one of the largest killers of civilians and the most destructive to the vegetation in the world. For the last 10 years about 100,000 people has been killed by fire (Wallington 2003). These deaths in the next years might increase due to the rise in population that has lead to crowding especially in the urban centers, unprepared ness by the fire rescue services and lack of community risk reduction programs. Fire crew technicians should be always available for safety, planning skills and immediate response incase of emergency. The community and fire rescue services should be always prepared incase of emergency, they should always have trained crew and equipped fire departments. I benefited from the research since I came to learn about the components needed to respond to disaster outbreak which include establishing standard operating guidelines. The components necessary for managing fire disasters include having an operational budget for training the fire crews and buying the required modern equipments, making it a must for all the crews to undergo training to the awareness level. The research shows that DFRS should have all the staff trained to the level of awareness together with some operations level staff and technical level staff. The DFRS has limited resources; some stations completely have no apparatus required for rescue services. As a result of this for the crews to be in a position of handling the disaster, they should be well equipped at any time. References Britain: H.M. Fire Service Inspectorate, (2007), Fire and Rescue Service manual: Vol. 2, The Stationery Office, 2007, London Barr, R, Eversole, (2003), the first chief handbook, penwell corporation, Tulsa. Buchman III, J, (2005), chief fire officer desk reference, Jones and Barlett, Sudbury. Collins, L, (2005), technical rescue operations volume II: common emergencies, Penwell Corporation, Tulsa. Croughy, Galai, Mark, (2005), the essential of risk management, McGraw hill, New York. Grimwood, P, (2008), Euro firefighter: global firefighting strategy and tactics, Jeremy Mills Publishing ltd, Lindley Neil Wallington, (2003), Out of the flames: the story of the Fire Services National Benevolent Fund 1943-2003, Jeremy Mills Publishing, Derbyshire. Read More