Fire Wont Wait - Why should you?
campaign to save the Isle of Wight Fire Control Centre - stop the regionalisation or sub-regionalisation of emergency fire controls
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Isle of Wight Branch Fire Brigades Union Fire Station South Street NEWPORT Isle of Wight PO30 1JQThank you.
The Regional Fire Control Centre (FiReControl) Project (7 years, £423m, £52m on consultants, 5 years behind schedule) has today been scrapped by the Government.
However, the fight continues to keep the Fire Control Centre on the Isle of Wight and oppose the moves of the Isle of Wight Council to merge it with Surrey FRS (involving a move to Reigate).
Press Association, 20/12/2010:
‘The Government has announced it is scrapping a controversial scheme to replace 46 fire control centres in England with nine new sites, which an MP claimed has “wasted” £1.3 billion.
The surprise move to end the so-called FiReControl project follows a series of delays and increased costs since it was announced by the Labour government several years ago, which pledged that the new system would better protect the public.
Fire Minister Bob Neill said he had reached agreement with the main contractor, Cassidian, to call a halt to the troubled project.
The Fire Brigades Union, which has been campaigning against the project, said the decision was “long overdue”.
General secretary Matt Wrack said: “For seven years the Fire Brigades Union has been sounding the alarm about this project, often as a lone voice, and this decision shows that we were right. While the project was going on, staff in emergency fire control have been treated appallingly, and I hope that, at long last, their security of employment can be confirmed.”
The union said the cost of renting empty buildings for the project was almost £13 million a year.
Labour MP John McDonnell, secretary of the FBU’s parliamentary group, said: “For years we’ve been advising the Government that this project is unworkable and a waste of resources. Our estimate is that up to £1.3 billion has been wasted in aborted cost, and staff morale undermined by years of indecision and incompetence.”
Source: UK Press Assocation: Fire control centre plan scrapped
Related links:
Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service
Surrey Fire and Rescue Service
Region 12 (Southern Region) Fire Brigades Union
VOIP (voice over internet protocol) is relatively new way to make calls.
The calls are made via a desk phone or via a phone similar to a mobile phone. Calls are made by plugging the phone into any available internet socket or via a Wifi network.
However, importantly for the emergency services there is no automated caller location information available. This means that local knowledge is a pre-requisite requirement for taking such calls.
Not withstanding this, the VOIP calls can also have a number that roams with the phone, i.e. the number could relate to a Blackpool STD whilst being made from a hotel in Plymouth.
This further compounds any attempt or use of automated caller location systems to correctly locate the call, in fact it is impossible.
BT (British Telecom) have apparently stated that nationally three-hundred VOIP 999 calls are made per day (as at May 2010).
VOIP packages are becoming increasingly available to the public and businesses, with the use ever increasing.
Local knowledge is becoming more not less important for Fire Control staff when taking emergency 999 calls and dealing with incidents.
As any professional Firefighter (Control) will tell you, they use local knowledge on a daily basis for taking emergency 999 calls and dealing with radio traffic and messages from Firefighters at incidents.
To quote Gradwell Dot Com Ltd:
‘Calls to 999/112 Emergency ServicesGradwell Dot Com provides access to public emergency call services to all customers within England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
When you dial either 999 or 112, your call is routed from the Gradwell Dot Com network to national emergency operators who will handle your call. The emergency operator will ask for specific information to correctly transfer your call. You will need to state clearly and promptly the nature of your emergency, your location and phone number, and any other requested information. The emergency operator will then route your call to the appropriate emergency agency, such as:
Your Gradwell VoIP phone service is portable so it is important that you register the location of your device and keep it updated. This information should be visible to the Emergency Services so they can see what location assistance is required. You can make changes to your location information online via the Gradwell Dot Com control panel.
Where you use your Gradwell VoIP service in a fully nomadic manner – such as using a soft-phone on a laptop – we understand it may not be technically feasible to set the address of every location that you use the service from. In such cases you should be aware that the emergency operator will NOT know your location and you must provide this information to them verbally.
source: http://www.gradwell.com/emergencycalls
On the Isle of Wight, Wight Cable have recently launched their own VOIP Business package:
http://www2.wightcable.com/voip.aspx
Over the coming years there is no doubt that VOIP telephones and call packages will become ever more popular.
As a result local knowledge for the taking of emergency 999 calls will be ever more important, not less important as politicians in their naivity wish to imply.
Face the Facts – Money To Burn, BBC Radio 4
Firefighters need the right equipment and back up if they are going to save lives. But millions of pounds have been spent on state of the art control rooms that may never be used, fire engines that are so heavy they can’t be driven at speed and a fire training house – that caught fire.
Just some of the costly procurement decisions made on behalf of fire and rescue services across Britain – but paid for by us.
Listen to the broadcast here via BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tgwlf/Face_the_Facts_Money_To_Burn/
Related links:
This and the previous Government have suggested that local fire controls, taking emergency 999 calls, should be regionalised or sub-regionalised. Millions have been wasted on the FiReControl project, which was to have regionalised the Fire Controls.
Firefighters and Firefighters (Control) have consistently stated that any plans for any regional or sub-regional emergency fire controls would be a gross waste of money and provide an inferior level of service to that delivered now to the public and Firefighters. Such an inferior service will increase the risk to the public and Firefighters alike.
Politicians would love you to believe that technology can solve all the problems and allow for the taking of 999 emergency fire calls to be handled hundreds of miles away from the location of the caller or the incident, without the call handler having any local knowledge.
This is simply not true. Politicians love to use soundbites and hide away from the reality that confronts them.
The way people are making calls is changing rapidly. Automatic caller location technology can specific where a call is coming from when made from a landline, but not in all cases (further details below).
Calls made via mobile phones can be traced. Accuracy is within around 15 feet in towns and cities, but as the location of the caller becomes more rural so does the accuracy of the location information.
Plans for regional or sub-regional emergency fire controls are a delight for the politicians to speak of cost cutting to save on the U.K. national debt, but reality must take priority over public relations with regard to the U.K. Fire Service and the taking of emergency 999 fire calls.
The similarity of the statements of politicians of this and previous governments, compared to the reality shows a stark similarity to that found and reported by Richard P. Feyman when investigating the Challenger Shuttle Disaster of 1996:
‘It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask “What is the cause of management’s fantastic faith in the machinery? .. It would appear that, for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.” (source: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt)
“For a successful technology,” Feynman concluded, “reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Richard P. Feynman
Rogers Commission
NASA Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
Quite clearly to many professional Firefighters and Firefighters (Control) working within the U.K. Fire Service, politicians (both national and local), along with many in senior management roles within local fire authorities or local councils are making claims about which they have very little knowledge and persist in not wishing to listen to Firefighters and Firefighters (Control).
As any emergency fire control operator will tell you they regularly experience emergency 999 calls that require local knowledge.
The assertion from many politicians that local knowledge is no longer required is extraordinarily naive.
Local knowledge is becoming more not less important.