The word fire in a fireman’s job title will become as redundant the word sale in salesman.That was the message from James Cleverly, Chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, who was speaking at FIREX International at London ExCeL.
Cleverly was adamant that those working in the fire services in London would have to adapt to the changing nature of emergencies within the capital.
“We are close to a tipping point,” said Cleverly as he made his case for the need for change.
Buttressing his case, the fire chief pointed out how:
Cleverly also discussed the charging regime introduced by fire services to counter the problem of false alarms, with repeat offenders – mostly public sector organisations, interestingly – paying substantial fines. “I am not hoping to make money out of this but to get firms to take more responsibility and steps to reduce such occurrences,” he explained.
The changing shape of London’s landscape also has implications for firefighting strategy. “London is getting taller and the traditional methods of fire-fighting would not work in high rise buildings.”
Citing the Shard he said that London’s fire service was “literally and metaphorically part of the project, every step of the way, from the ground up.”
Among the innovations Cleverly hoped to promote were sprinkler systems in domestic properties as well as bringing different emergency services together under the same location to promote more cooperation and more efficient responses.
Another innovation Cleverly is keen on is to keep fire service responses in line with technological changes.
“In the future when people want to alert the fire service they can take a photo on their smartphones which would be geo-stamped and sent to response centres.”
The advantage of this, according to Cleverly, would be to provide firefighters with graphic information of what they were up against in advance, so they could attend with the appropriate kit, manpower and strategy.
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