Third of calls to fire service false alarms

Home Office data shows that more than a third of all incidents attended by the Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service in the year to September 2020 stemmed from false alarms.

Most were caused by faulty equipment or the accidental activation of smoke alarms and sprinkler systems. Of the rest, 20 per cent were raised by people with good intentions, while 39 ‘malicious’ incidents were linked to hoax calls or alarms being set off where there was no fire.

The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) said false alarms happened “approximately every two minutes” across England and cost services thousands of hours of lost productivity – “time that could be spent on other vital, and often life-saving activities”.

In Shropshire, 39 per cent of all calls attended over 12 months were false alarms, while more than 226,000 were logged nationally, including over 5,500 malicious incidents.

NFCC chairman Roy Wilsher described the figures as shocking and said malicious callers could prevent crews from attending incidents where people were in serious danger.

He added: “People making these reckless calls need to ask themselves what would happen if a member of their family needed emergency assistance and firefighters were attending a malicious call. We need to see this change.”

A Home Office spokesman warned hoaxers that they could face prosecution, adding: “Malicious false alarms take our firefighters away from front line work, protecting our communities and potentially saving lives.

"They can amount to a criminal offence and we support the prosecution of these incidents where appropriate.”

Over the course of 10 years, the number of false calls has dropped by more than a fifth. But in 2020 they still represented more than 40 per cent of all incidents attended by 45 fire services, while actual fires accounted for just 28 per cent.

Hotspots

Almost two-thirds were due to fire alarms or related equipment malfunctioning or being accidentally set off, while almost a third were raised by people who genuinely thought there was an emergency.

Burned toast or general cooking mishaps were behind almost a quarter of all false alarms, with more than 32,000 attributed to faulty smoke alarms and 177, bizarrely, linked to animals.

A warning was issued to Shropshire households over incompatible electrical chargers last month after a resident avoided a potentially dangerous house fire, which was caused by an incompatible charging unit.

On-call crews from Much Wenlock and Tweedale were called to a small kitchen fire after the homeowner was alerted by a smoke alarm in Much Wenlock at 4.34am.

Upon arrival, the fire investigation officer determined the cause to be the result of an incompatible charging device connected to a set of hair clippers. Whilst the connector fitted the appliance, the charger was for a different electrical device. The voltage from the charger was too high for the clippers and caused the electrical current to generate excessive heat, melting the charging device and spreading to adjacent items.

The Home Office said fire prevention was “core business” for every service and officers used experience and local intelligence to decide what interventions would best prevent and reduce the risk of fire in their communities.

A number of fire brigades have introduced charging policies in an effort to recover the costs of attending persistent false alarms at hotspots such as hospitals, student halls of residence and airports.

Charges, which differ from service to service, are usually restricted to non-residential facilities and can cost repeat offenders hundreds of pounds.