Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service at the Front of Innovation

The expectation on fire services to do more despite ever increasing budget restraints has put a growing emphasis on the need to be innovative. In Merseyside new ideas and ways of doing things are welcome and have been at the forefront of a number of projects introduced over recent years. Many of these ideas have come from staff themselves and there is an increasing drive to get staff involved in generating ideas that can improve service delivery and save money.

Innovation has become an important feature when developing and strengthening the service’s capability to deal and plan for incidents. Over the last few years a number of ground-breaking projects have been introduced that has changed the way the service responds and deals with emergencies.

This includes:

Being First to Use Motorcycles

Motorcycles have been used in fire services around the world to respond to different sort of incidents but not in the UK. That was until 2004 when Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service took the lead by introducing its first response motorcycle into its Blue Light fleet (which responds to automatic alarm calls). Historically 97% of Automatic Fire Alarms (AFA) in Merseyside often turn out to be Unwanted Fire Signals (UWFS), which do not warrant a firefighting appliance.

During office hours, the motorcycle is available for deployment to AFA calls in Liverpool city centre. As the motorcycle is able to get through traffic more easily, it is able to assess the situation at the scene as the main appliances are on their way. This allows the large appliances to return to station if it is a false alarm or be better prepared for any developing situation.

The motorcycle has arrived at incidents before the appliances on around 94% of occasions but also carries out pro-active work and builds up relationships in the city centre to try and reduce AFAs.
 
Since it was introduced, the number of AFAs have fallen from by 22% in 12 months.
The Fire Service also use the motorcycle to help with pro-active motorcycle road safety. The ‘Bikesafe’ workshop facility was formed together with Merseyside Police and the Local Road Safety Unit. By passing on their knowledge, skills and experience, fire and police class one response motorcyclists help riders improve their safety skills and encourage them to learn further advanced skills with voluntary groups such as Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and private trainers.
 
With the success of the motorcycle, the service has been looking at other areas where a motorcycle may assist its emergency provision. It is now getting ready to launch a pilot examining the potential of motorcycles equipped with firefighting capability. Two BMW bikes have been constructed by Firexpress in Denmark, equipped with firefighting capability specifically for the UK market.

During the six month pilot, the bikes will attend small fire incidents as part of a two appliance response. The type of incidents they will attend include wheelie bin fires, vehicle fires and skips.

Small Fires Units

MF&RS emergency response has been enhanced with the introduction of Small Fires Units, designed specifically to tackle the many nuisance fires that tie up rescue pumps. The Mercedes Sprinter 4-wheel drive vehicle is used to attend small rubbish, bonfires or car fires on open ground.

Its Compressed Air Foam system (CAFs) has been built specifically for the vehicle and will give additional benefits, including using up to 80% less water and reducing ‘knock-down’ times. The foam can vary from ‘wet’ to ‘dry’ and uses the principle ‘stay where you spray’, with the foam blanket remaining intact for hours, preventing re-ignition.

CAFs is used extensively abroad, including America, Germany and France but has only been used by a handful of Fire Services in this country. But MF&RS was the first to introduce a bespoke CAFs-only vehicle in the UK.

Incident Management Unit

Support at incidents has been enhanced in Merseyside with the introduction of the Incident Management Unit. This is a mobile unit, a Ford Transit, that attends any incident that involves three pumps or more, or any fatality, to provide back-up and support to the Incident Manager. The vehicle is equipped with electronic and paper-based facilities including a conference area, laptop computer, chemdata, comprehensive radio communications and risk assessment and decision logs. In effect it is a mobile reference library for the Incident Commander. It is also fitted with all round CCTV with auto-recording facilities.

Cool van – for Dehydrated Firefighters!

The recuperation vehicle was first deployed last October, and provides immediate care to firefighters suffering from the effects of heat exhaustion through; rehydration, active cooling, rest and food to sustain energy. It is known as the Cool Van and is crewed full-time by firefighters who are not fully operationally fit.

MF&RS has long been aware of the effects that heat, exertion, stress and using heavy equipment have on firefighters during emergency response. They commissioned new research from Liverpool John Moores University to examine the effectiveness of ‘active cooling’, immersing of hands and forearms in cold water, in reducing core body temperature.

They also looked at techniques used around the world. The van, developed in Merseyside, is based on a welfare vehicle deployed by the New York Fire Department in hot weather to rehydrate firefighters. It contains a range of facilities and equipment including specially designed chairs for cooling, a mass oxygen multilayer, portable air shelter and refreshments.

River Rescue Team

Last month MF&RS launched its new rescue boat, which has been custom built to enhance the effectiveness of the River Rescue Team in emergency response situations. It incorporates specially designed slide rafts for fast running water and sleds for specialised rescue on mud flats.

The new vessel can conduct open water searches, rescue casualties from entrapment in mud or quicksand and allows firefighters to treat and transfer any casualties. The slide raft is capable of transferring up to 60 people at any single time at high speed, which would allow MF&RS to evacuate large numbers of casualties in the event of an aircraft ditch.

The River Rescue Team, that is part of MF&RS Blue Light provision, compiled a specification and the new boat was designed and built by Liverpool-based MST. It is 10.5 metres long and jet-driven, with the ability to be used in all weather.

International Water Skills Centre

Merseyside is at the forefront of developing the country’s first water rescue and flood response training centre. Crews from stations with deep still water risks have been undertaking training in water rescue techniques. The two-day course develops firefighters as still water responders. This includes learning about water entry to carry out rescues, how to use PPE such as life suits, buoyancy aids and throw lines and new swimming and survival techniques in the water. The course is delivered by Merseyside’s own uniformed staff who have been trained as trainers.

Last month they launched the International Water Skills Centre, on Liverpool’s waterfront. It is a centre of excellence for water-based rescue skills to be used by all emergency service workers, as well as outside organisations and local community groups.

Threat Response Group

As well as responding to emergencies in new ways, MF&RS is also dealing with enforcement innovatively and has set up the Threat Response Group. This group has brought together various teams within MF&RS who are tackling a range of threats from fireworks misuse to anti-social behaviour.

This includes the Firework Incident Research Safety Team, which is at the cutting edge of identifying explosive devices. The team was set up as a partnership between MF&RS and Merseyside Police in 2004 to tackle firework misuse. The result was a dramatic 79% drop in firework incidents in Merseyside and more than 100 tonnes of illegal fireworks removed from the streets. As well as tackling firework misuse on Merseyside, the team also offers a range of services to authorities across the country to deal with firework misuse and taking steps against those who are responsible.

At the heart of the Threat Response Group is the philosophy of using partnership work to come up with innovative solutions to very specific issues.

Advocates

More and more vulnerable communities in the region are safer from fire thanks to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s pioneering Advocate scheme. They specialise in a variety of areas and are often representative of the target groups they work with either through ethnicity, gender, age, skills or other characteristics. This helps them to influence and communicate better with residents. They include deaf advocates, bilinguals and older person’s and disability advocates.

They have already broken language or cultural barriers with hundreds of residents, and promoted key fire safety messages. This has helped to improve the quality of life for many people by improving safety in their homes.

The advocates project was introduced in 2002 and proved so successful in communicating with sections of the community that are traditionally hard to reach, that it has been expanded not just in Merseyside but in other Fire and Rescue Services.

Data sharing

It’s not just front end services that are benefiting from innovation. One of the other biggest areas of development is in Knowledge and Information Management and in particular data sharing. MF&RS is leading the way among fire services in setting up groundbreaking information sharing arrangements.

It is working in partnership with social services departments to help make vulnerable sections of the community safer from fire. To make this happen effectively, social services are sharing data about their clients which is then cleansed so that MF&RS can identify who has not been visited for a HFSC.

And the innovation doesn’t stop there. MF&RS has now set up a generation scheme where staff are being paid to come up with ideas. The scheme was launched in April and a panel of staff are now sifting through the first batch of submissions. So who knows what the future may hold.