Range of Services

Firefighting

Our core area of operational work remains our response to fires. However the type of fire incidents we attend is very diverse in itself. In 2008/09, we attended 54,764 incidents of which 21,940 were fire related. These incidents ranged from major industrial fires to smaller grass and refuse fires and everything in between.

In 2008/09, there were 2463 fires in dwellings and the majority of people injured in fires were injured within domestic premises,  frequently within their own homes. For this reason, our operational crews spend a lot of their time carrying out Home Fire Safety Visits (HFSVs) in their local area, providing householders with the fire prevention information they need to keep themselves and their families safe.

When fires do occur, our highly trained firefighters respond with sophisticated equipment and state of the art vehicles to bring the incident to a safe conclusion. For very large fires, our aerial appliances come in to their own. SFR has 12 Aerial Rescue Pumps  which provide a 30m hydraulically operated tower that can be used to rescue people from roofs or windows in upper floors, and can also direct a large and powerful firefighting jet of water downwards on to a large fire. This firefighting jet can even be controlled remotely by specially trained operators.

If you would like to know more about our ARPs or rescue Pumps, please have a look at our Appliances section.

If you would like to arrange a Home Fire Safety Visit, click the link on the right of this page.

Water Rescue

Strathclyde Fire & Rescue provides an emergency response to flooding incidents and as the rate of such incidents continues to increase, we in turn are increasing the resources we can make available to meet this requirement.

In the last year, the service attended 341 such incidents, from small scale urban floods to major incidents such as the Maich Trout Fishery reservoir outside Lochwinnoch where our new High Volume Pump proved its worth. Brought into the service as part of the national strategy on resilience, the pump is capable of moving 400,000 litres of water an hour over a distance of 3 km.  

As members of the national Maritime Incident Response Group, we also provide a specialised fire and rescue service for incidents at sea. Our 55-strong team is coordinated from Greenock Fire Station and are available by recall whenever required.

For more information about flooding or boat safety, have a look at our Your Safety section.

Road Traffic Collision

Road Traffic Collisions form a large part of our front line service and in partnership with our emergency service colleagues across Strathclyde, we are working hard to reduce their impact.  In the last year, the Service attended 1,230 such incidents, using a range of specialist equipment to help extricate victims.

Help us to reduce road traffic collisions by being as safe as you can be on the roads - why not check out  our road safety pages?

Urban Search and Rescue

Our Urban Search and Rescue teams are trained to locate casualties trapped beneath collapsed structures. We use specialist equipment such as listening devices which can pick up sounds as small as a ticking watch buried metres below rubble. Heavy duty cutting equipment allows us to get to those who are trapped as quickly and as safely as possible.

Community

Our Community Safety Teams work in partnership with the communities we serve to help stop fires before they start. Initiatives such as our Home Fire Safety Visits and the youth engagement scheme FireReach all have a part to play.

Advisory

The Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 dramatically changed the fire safety legislative process, shifting the focus of responsibility for fire safety firmly on to the shoulders of those who own or operate commercial buildings.

The law not only included a greater number of buildings in its remit, but extended the responsibility for fire safety to a wider range of roles including employers, owners, landlords and contractors carrying out repair work. Those with such responsibilities are now required to undertake and regularly review fire safety risk assessments and, where necessary, take appropriate action to remedy any shortcomings.

More information about fire safety at work including guidance and advice to employers can be found in our 'Your Safety' pages

Resilience

The communities that make up Strathclyde both expect and deserve an effective response to an emergency. We and our partner agencies need to plan, train and exercise jointly in order to be prepared and resilient in the face of major emergencies and disruptive challenges.

Our Civil Contingencies & Resilience department works closely with multi-agency partners ensuring that Strathclyde Fire & Rescue is in compliance with the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004. We are a key member of the Strathclyde Emergencies Co-ordination Group (SECG), the Strategic Co-ordination Group as required by the CCA, and work alongside the Police and other emergency response services to fulfil our civil contingencies planning responsibilities.