West Midlands Fire & Rescue Service News

It’s been another busy year for the fire safety industry, with higher risk building registration and the new Building Safety Regulator under reforms of the Building Safety Act. Designed to provide greater accountability and management of higher-risk buildings, the Building Safety Act 2022 mandated two new roles for managing building safety – Accountable Persons and Principal Accountable Persons. FIREX International 2023 FIREX also returned to ExCel this year, covering the latest i...

A West Midlands mum has thanked Birmingham City Council for ensuring that a ‘life-saving’ sprinkler system had been installed in her tenth-floor flat, when a fire caused by an electric bike cut off her family’s only escape route out of the building. Even though 25 firefighters were mobilized and at the scene within three minutes – the sprinkler system had already brought the fire under control. Had they not been fitted, the outcome would have been very different. Import...

GMB Union has announced industrial action ballot dates for more than 15,000 ambulance workers across 11 trusts in England and Wales for strike action. Ambulance workers from London, East of England, East and West Midlands, North East, Yorkshire, North West, South Central, South East Coast, South West, and Wales Ambulance trusts will participate in the strike vote. strike ballots Thousands more NHS workers will also be balloted across other NHS trusts, with more votes set to follow Thousands...

West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority has appointed Wayne Brown as their new Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO). Wayne will join West Midlands Fire and Rescue Authority from London Fire Brigade (LFB) and is in his 28th year of service. A vastly experienced strategic manager, he is also an experienced ‘gold’ incident commander and has attended some of the UK’s most significant operational incidents, including terrorist attacks and the devastating Grenfell Tower fire. I am exci...

West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) staff, volunteers and visitors will fall silent for two minutes at 9am on 9 September in memory of emergency services friends and colleagues who have died as a result of their duties. Annual Emergency Services Day The tribute, coinciding with the start of the second annual Emergency Services Day (ESD), will be followed by the raising of ESD flags outside WMFS buildings. A series of events will also be taking place across the UK in the lead up to ESD, including...

A review of how a fire spread through a West Midlands hotel is being carried out by West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS). Firefighters arrived at the Holiday Inn near Walsall within 4 minutes of being mobilized. They immediately started to tackle what was already a significant fire, which soon consumed much of the building. West Midlands Hotel Fire 999 calls started to be received shortly before 4pm on Friday 2 August 2019, to the site near Junction 10 of the M6 motorway. WMFS were supported at...

A program of free CPD seminars focusing on the lessons learnt from frontline operations will run at The Emergency Services Show 2019 at the NEC, Birmingham on 18 and 19 September. The Lessons Learnt Theatre, sponsored by UCLan, will feature case studies of major incidents including the Salisbury nerve agent incident, the recent wildfires on Winter Hill in Lancashire and the Ocado warehouse fire in Hampshire. Experts from across the emergency services community will detail findings from current...

West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) announced that it is supporting work that will see sprinklers being fitted in tower blocks across the region. Sprinkler systems can save lives while protecting properties; people have a much higher chance of surviving a fire in the home where sprinklers are fitted. Retrofit sprinklers in high rises WMFS said in a statement that they are pleased to see the decision taken by several West Midlands local authorities to retrofit sprinklers across their high-rise to...

West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) announced that it will be hosting two realistic and interactive road traffic collision (RTC) rescue challenges at this year’s Emergency Services Show. Extrication Challenge Taking place at the NEC, National Exhibition Centre Birmingham, United Kingdom from 18 to 19 September, 2019, the Extrication and First Aid & Trauma Challenges will provide an arena for some of the UK’s best rescue personnel to come together and develop their proficiency lev...

West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) has been graded as ‘Good’ in a report published on 20th June by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS). This is the first report completed by HMICFRS into WMFS since the inspection program recommenced in 2018 after a break of several years, during which time WMFS has seen significant government funding reductions. Safety and rescue report The inspectorate has commented that they are ‘very pl...

The second series of ‘Into the Fire’, the West Midlands Fire Service’s very own TV program, starts on Monday, 20th August, 2018. West Midlands Fire Service TV show Thanks to state-of-the-art camera technology, viewers will be able to see and hear what the firefighters do when they respond to emergencies. West Midlands Fire Service teamed up with multi-award-winning broadcaster UKTV to produce the two series of nine one-hour episodes. Along with the fire service’s 999 r...

Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service organised a large-scale chemical leak training exercise at Grocontinental Grocontinental’s compound in Whitchurch Business Park – one of the largest freezer stores in Europe and a major Shropshire employer was the venue for the chemical leak training exercise.Firefighters donned special airtight chemical protection suits to tackle a reported ammonia leak during a large scale training exercise at a major food storage and distri...