Essex covers 366, 980 hectares and is responsible to 1, 712,200 people and is considered as one of the largest fire services in UK. It is the fire authority for Essex county, East of England.
The service witness an average of 24, 490 emergencies annually of which most are caused by traffic accidents and fires. In 2009-2010, there were actually 3,117 ‘primary’ fires and the service handles 905 primary fires and 1,703 ‘secondary’ fires. They also got 530 prank calls in the same period.
Moreover, there are 880 full-time firefighters, 488 on-call firefighters, 45 control personnel and 256 support staff which sums up to 1,669 staff employed in the Service. There 50 operational stations installed across the region, 12 of which are operated 24 hours and are based at generally more densely locations; 34 are crewed by on-call firefighters and 4 are crewed only at day time. The headquarters is based at Witham and it is managed by Chief Fire Officer David Johnson since 2005.
Its tasks varied from road accidents to rescuing people trapped in collapsed buildings or enclosed spaces to putting out fires, as well as initiating orientations to educate the public regarding fire prevention measures. In addition to the varied tasks the service has, they are also part of the Urban Search and Rescue team in UK which is tasked to carry out search and rescue operations in collapsed buildings and enclosed spaces. They used search dogs in their operations to find people in rubbles.
Some of the major threats the service is dealing are the Stansfed and Southend Airports, Harwich Seaport, Lakeside Shopping Center, Coryton Oil Refinery, Docks at Tilbury and a potion of the M25 and M11 motorways and A12 trunk road.
