Small outdoor blazes became the most frequent emergency for fire crews this summer, though targeted safety campaigns are successfully driving down the number of house fires.
Overall emergency callouts jumped significantly during the warmer months, with early data showing a sharp rise in incidents attended throughout July and August.
The busiest month during the first quarter of the year was May, which saw incidents peak at 825. More than a fifth of these emergencies, 21 per cent, were concentrated in the Scarborough District.
Between June and July, the total number of incidents surged by 31 per cent, rising from 848 to 1,039. This has pushed the daily average up to 29 incidents per day, an increase of six incidents daily compared to the previous four years.
During the first three months of the financial year, the most frequent callouts were for small fires in the open, which accounted for 356 incidents. This was followed by 320 false alarms made with good intent, 96 road traffic collision scene safety incidents, and 88 requests to assist other emergency agencies.
Director of Operational Support and Assurance, Ben Ilsley, said:
"Over the last two years now and the summer months have been busier for fire rescue services up and down the country. So, there was a a small increase year-on-year in quarter one, a 2% overall increase in the number of incidents we attended. From July August, we did experience significant increases, especially within fires and some false alarms within August as well.
We are going to more fires than in previous years. We have had a year-on-year increase now. During quarter one, fire small in the open was our most attended incident types, it's known that that would usually be false alarms, but it'd be an indication we are seeing more fire small in the open."
Despite the overall upward trend in emergencies, house fires have slightly decreased. Crews attended 77 dwelling fires in the first quarter, down from 79 during the same period last year.
More than half of these residential blazes occurred in single-occupancy houses, with cooking appliances identified as the ignition source in 17 cases.
Mr Ilsley said:
"What we have seen is a year-on-year increase over the last two years in terms of the overall number of incidents and fires we attend.
But despite that, the number of dwelling fires we attend, so fires in people's homes, which is that the target intervention of a home fire safety visit, have come down. So we have seen a year-on-year decrease and again able to report a slight decrease in there. So we are confident that work is impactful."
The reduction in house fires follows a major push in preventative community work. Firefighters completed 1,709 Home Fire Safety Visits between April and June, achieving a 10 per cent increase compared to the previous year.
Targeted interventions for high and very-high-risk properties also saw a 13 per cent boost, with crews continuing to complete over a thousand additional visits during the busiest operational months of the summer.
Fire safety checks have also significantly increased due to changes in a revised risk-based intervention programme, with commercial protection jobs rising by 27 per cent.
Covering a predominantly rural area of 3,200 square miles continues to challenge average response times due to the vast travel distances involved.
During the first quarter, the overall incident response time averaged 12 minutes and five seconds. For dwelling fires, crews arrived in an average of 10 minutes and six seconds.
Overall fire engine availability has improved slightly to 70 per cent, representing a three per cent increase on the previous year. Whole-time duty systems operated at 99 per cent availability, while on-call duty systems ran at 58 per cent. A recent recruitment drive brought in 16 new starters, which has already increased availability at 14 on-call stations.
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