Memorandum by Helen Mason (FRS 01)
I would like to comment on Regional Fire Control
Centres.
BACKGROUND
I have 22 years' experience of working in a
large County Fire Brigade control room. I have seen many technological
changes throughout my career and have worked at all levels within
the Control room, and in other parts of the Fire Service. I have
managed a Control room watch for over 10 years, and am currently
the Officer in Charge of Essex Fire Control room on a temporary
basis. I am highly qualified in Management—I have the post
graduate Certificate in Management, Diploma in Management and
am currently completing a Master of Arts in Management. I come
from a Fire Brigade Family. My father was an Assistant Chief Fire
Officer, my brother is an Assistant Divisional Officer and my
husband is a Firefighter.
My fears for the public are:
1. Using a computerised system for such a
large area
I believe that, no matter how advanced the technology
is, the actual call handling time for a person who is trapped
in a house fire will be longer than the current 40 to 60 seconds.
This is because today's systems are simple, and require only enough
questions to locate on a local level. A system for five or more
Counties will have to involve asking further questions about locations,
to avoid mistaking same name villages in such a large area. Alternatively
it will involve checking the location on a map in order to be
able to select the appropriate fire appliances. Ultimately, someone
will not get a Fire Appliance sent to them in time, using a more
complex system, because the operator will have to spend more time
trying to match the address. I have kept a person alive whilst
trapped in a fire until fire crews arrived. I know that every
second counts, as this particular person was rescued just in time.
To illustrate this point, why not investigate
call handling times for Police and Ambulance services, who use
these more complicated systems, and compare them to current Fire
Service times.
2. Every day occurrences
The new systems are designed for coping with
a terrorist attack. (How many of these have there been in the
UK in the last five years?) This is at the expense of every day
incidents.
Consider the rush hour in Britain.
Nine controls with, say, 10 fire call handlers
each = 90 control staff taking calls in the UK at any one time.
When a car catches fire at rush hour time, it
is not unusual to receive 50 to 60 calls for this one incident.
(Due to mobile telephones) This means that if there are two incidents
on motorways, during the rush hour, somewhere in Britain, every
call handler in the Country will be tied up and the callers will
be stuck in a loop between the nine fire control rooms. (Currently
there would be three times this amount of call takers available
in the UK) What would happen to the person stuck in a burning
building at this time? How will their call be answered as quickly
as today?
3. Covering adjacent RCCS in spate conditions
If I have to take a call for London, which has
been diverted to East of England due to London being busy, how
do I get the call back to London? I will either have to get back
in the same queue and end up being diverted back to one of my
own colleagues, or the mobilising system would have to cover the
whole country. If this is the case, how would I keep track of
my own appliances, if other RCCs start turning them out to incidents,
without me knowing. I might have been planning a strategic relief
of five appliances to a large incident at this point. I believe
that this will happen every rush hour of every day, throughout
the summer if it is a long hot period of weather, every time there
is a thunder storm, and every bonfire night. We are being told
that this would be for exceptional circumstances. I do not agree.
4. Knowledge
Currently our staff have two years of study
in order to learn in excess of 150 special procedures relevant
to our County. These include Stansted Airport, BP refinery, Bramble
Island Works, major foam attack policy, major incident policy,
etc.
We have to learn about equipment, where it is
held, what it is used for, how a fire ground works and command
and control.
We are told that this will not be an issue in
the new RCCs because the computer system will do everything for
us. However, they cannot tell us which computer system this is,
how it will be kept up to date, and how we provide a decent level
of service if and when the computer crashes (which it will at
some point) Currently, if our computer crashes, we can work with
pen and paper and our comprehensive knowledge of our Country ensures
that we continue to provide an excellent service to the public.
What will happen in the RCC if the background knowledge of every
high risk premise is not there? (It would not be as there would
be far too many premises to learn about for such a large area)
Concerning the Regional Fire Control Centres
and diversity in the Fire and Rescue Service—as far as I
am aware there are only nine staff out of approximately 120 in
the Eastern Region who are even willing to consider working in
the new RCCs. This is because the Change Management team have
not been able to get the "buy in" from Control staff
and the majority want no part of it. Bearing in mind that Control
is by far the largest area within the Uniformed Fire Service,
where women are employed, how is losing all of these people going
to help improve the number of women in the Fire Service? It's
ironic that Control have been used to achieve the modernisation
of the Fire Service when it is the very department which attracts
women to the Uniformed Fire Service!
My biggest fear is that none of the excellent
Fire Control room staff that we have in this Country, will want
to have any part in these dangerous plans. If we lose these staff,
(and we have already lost some in our County) their vital experience
and local knowledge will be lost. This will be to the detriment
to the Public, Firefighters and other emergency services. Every
Fire Service performance indicator will suffer, from the number
of fire deaths, to turn out times for appliances.
I believe that the current 48 Control rooms
should be interlinked and that investment should be made to make
them safe from terrorism and upgrade their technology where needed.
This would address the worries about our new world, whilst ensuring
the local service, which is used for the vast majority of the
time, is not compromised.
Finally, if I was a terrorist and wanted to
paralyse the UK, how much easier would it be to take out nine
controls than 48?
Please remember that fire engines do not arrive
at fires unless Fire Control get their job right (which they currently
do exceptionally well).
Mrs Helen Mason
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