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Essex County Fire and Rescue Service is the statutory FRS (fire and rescue service) for the county of Essex in the south-east of England. Between January 1 and December 31 2005 the service attended a total of 24,291 emergency calls, mostly made up of fires and road traffic collisions.^[1] ECFRS employs 1792 people breaking down into 958 fulltime firefighters, 532 retained (those who have full-time jobs but attend incidents on a call-out basis), 49 control operators and 253 support staff. It operates 52 fire stations spread throughout the county consisting of 18 fulltime stations, located in the more densely populated centres, and 34 retained stations providing cover throughout the rest of the county.

Major risks covered by ECFRS include Stansted Airport, Lakeside shopping centre, Southend Airport, BP's oil refinery in Canvey Island and part of the M25 and M11 motorways.

As well as attending fires and road traffic collisions, the FRS provides emergency response to chemical spills and provides one of the country's urban search and rescue teams - a team of officers with special training and equipment to conduct rescues from collapsed buildings and enclosed spaces, their resources include Darcy, the USAR dog, who has been trained to sniff out people trapped in rubble.

Contents 1 Organisation 2 Appliances 3 Urban Search and Rescue Team 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

• See: Interactive map of fire stations

ECFRS Headquarters and Control are based in Hutton, Brentwood. The FRS is divided into seven Community Commands. They are:

1. Basildon and Castle Point Community Command
2. Chelmsford and Maldon Community Command
3. Colchester and Tendering Community Command
4. Harlow and Epping Community Command
5. Southend and Rochford Community Command
6. Thurrock and Brentwood Community Command
7. Uttlesford and Braintree Community Command

The Chief Fire Officer is David Johnson

Emergency calls are taken by Control Operators, based in the Control Room at service headquarters in Hutton. The administrative centre for the service is also based at Service headquarters.

There are training departments based in Chelmsford, Orsett, Witham and Wethersfield.

Service Workshops, where the service's fleet of vehicles are maintained, are based in Lexden, Colchester.

ECFRS has the following appliances in operation

• 50 Rescue Pumps
• 23 Water Tenders
• 5 Aerial Ladder Platforms
• 4 Pinzgauers
• 4 Rescue Tenders
• 1 Mobile Control Unit
• 1 Incident Response Unit
• 1 Unimog
• 1 Hose Layer
• 1 Incident Response Unit

Using state-of-the-art equipment, multi-purpose vehicles, a sniffer dog and purpose built base staffed with a highly trained and experienced team are the elements which have come together in Essex to create the County Fire Service’s new Urban Search and Rescue Team.

The team is equipped to deal with the incidents in which people have become trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings and major transport accidents. They will be able to safely go in and get those people out, or in the event of possible collapse will be ready to shore up unstable buildings so that fire-fighters can carry on working.

The USAR team are equipped with Prime Movers, specialist vehicles that can be loaded with one of five pods, depending on what situation the team are going to face. These pods include support, technical rescue and even a small multi-purpose vehicle which can get into tight spaces and move heavy loads.

But its not all high tech equipment, there is also the back to basics approach offered by Darcy the search dog, who has been trained to help sniff out people trapped.

Following the events of September 11, 2001, new risks were shown to the world, risks for which rescue services would need to be prepared and the government responded with the announcement that urban search and rescue teams were to be established around the country and one of the first services was Essex.

Essex was chosen because it had 14 officers already trained in the art of urban rescue, officers which had used their skills in finding and rescuing people from the rubble of collapsed buildings or can put their skills to practice creating structures to make buildings in danger of collapse safe. The 14 officers of the UK Fire Service Safety and Rescue Team in Essex will provide a hugely experienced knowledge base to help create the new team which is currently going through a rigorous recruitment process ahead of final selection.

The team were part of the rescue effort that was sent to Bam, Iran after it was hit by devastating earthquakes in December 2003 where they helped in the search for victims amongst the rubble which is all that was left of the ancient city.

Plans for a new base have been given approval and £1.1million has been set aside for its construction.

Rudy Jackson, who is the USAR manager, said: “We are working at the cutting edge and there is a real buzz around this, we can’t wait to get in our base and get started properly. This is a very exciting time for us, we are founding a new section and have been supplied with all the new equipment and our base is in the process of being built."^{[citation needed]}

• Fire Service in the United Kingdom

• Official site