It’s the classic cartoon rescue for fire services — the cat stuck in the tree. A heroic team of burly men bravely climb their ladder and rescue the poor moggy stuck on a high branch after having thought itself more capable of climbing than its species necessarily dictates.
But things have moved on. This week, I came across a story of a fire crew in Carlisle who rescued a kitten from the engine of a car — its new owners then christened it “Miracle.”
Perfect local newspaper feel-good news complete with a ready-to-go pun (“It’s not every day that you lift the bonnet of your car and find a little Miracle”). The partner of the car’s owner, Carol Milnes, told her local paper:
It took two and a half hours but they appreciated it was a living creature. It was completely stuck. But the fireman in charge, Steve Graham, said he’d never before seen anything like it. They really were wonderful.
I’m sorry, two and a half hours!? Is this really an acceptable use of Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service’s time amid a national picture of huge budget cuts to fire services?
Presumably (and I say this seeking an answer from any current or former firefighters) the fire crew from Carlisle would have been available to leave in favour of a greater emergency should the need arise?
But it would have taken them some time to get away, given that, according to the report, they were underneath the car with inflatable airbags. Essentially though, all the fire crew did was lift the car (which could have been done by a mechanic) and removed a wheel (which could have been done by anyone with a car).
Now, I’m not necessarily blaming the fire service for this. They responded to an emergency call, as per their duty, and once on the scene it would have been a bit awkward to say, “What a waste of time, just call a mechanic.”_But when you consider the resources that have gone into this, should those costs be passed on to the member of the public that made the call?
How much does it cost to send a fire engine out?
An exact figure of how much a 2.5-hour call out would cost the Cumbrian council tax payer is hard to work out, but we can make some informed guesses.
London Fire Brigade estimate that the 40,734 false call-outs they received in 2012 cost GB pound 37 million, so on that basis the average call-out costs them about GB pound 908 — a decent approximate figure we can use for Cumbria, given no similar figures are readily available.
Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service states in its 2012/13 service plan that the minimum crew size per appliance is four. Again, pay figures from Cumbria are hard to find, but Staffordshire FRS puts its basic hourly rate for a competent firefighter is GB pound 13.
So the time the staff spent attending the incident, plus the 6 minutes average time to respond to an incident and the 9-minute drive back would have cost the fire service another GB pound 143.
This adds up to a highly approximate GB pound 1,051 to save a cat from a car bonnet.
Call me a miserable pedant by all means, but should we really be celebrating this? Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service states among its key results that it aims to achieve “an effective and proportionate response.”
You can’t fault the fire crews for effectiveness, but proportionate? I’m not so sure.
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This raises an important point.
With continuing public sector cutbacks, it makes no sense for our most important services to get involved in these kind of activities.
Leaving cats where they are may not be nice, but it might well be necessary.
To be clear to all, I quite like cats. Nothing against cats. I just find this story a particularly irksome example of the wasted resources. Should fire services go further and publically state ‘No more rescuing cats from trees/wherever!’ Where does it end? Do they still rescue horses? Cows? Dogs? What job is too small…
Such cruel and heartless sentiments. Using austerity measures as a reason to leave a living creature in peril! It was a valuable training exercise if nothing else. Cumbria FRS had a chance to use its inflatable bags in a real life scenario- you don’t get this kind of ‘at the coalface’ reality at a training college. They did call the police first to shoot the kitten, but the gun budget was cut and no firearm was available…
In Toronto home owners are fined $1,230.00 for a false fire alarm. I should call the fire department to see if cat rescues are still free.
Coming from someone who used to own two cats, I think this is a waste of government resources.
Blimey Colin, that’s a bit harsh! I suppose it focuses the mind of the homeowner somewhat. We have an issue over with the fire service charging and trading; leveraging their considerable brand and positive public image for commercial purposes. It’s being covered in a seminar at FIREX International on Wednesday 15th May. See http://www.firex.co.uk for more detail. I’m expecting fireworks- verbal ones obviously. Real ones make the venue a bit edgy….
interesting point Rob… but pets is a members of the family… on the other hand… in Eastern Europe a lot of the people have cats as a pets… and from 1920 to 1994 Eastern European fire departments never offer this type of service…but when I travel I never seen dead cats on the trees…
London Fire Brigade estimate that the 40,734 false call-outs they received in 2012 cost £37 million
@Robert Brown, £37 million is very huge amount. Is it possible to reduce that amount by implementing some system to identify the false call-outs ?
1920 to 1994 Eastern European fire departments never offer this type of service
@Alexander Stephens, what happened after 1994 ? Why did they start offering this type of services ? Did they get pressure from any organization to include such services ?
Coming from someone who used to own two cats, I think this is a waste of government resources.
@ColinBodbyl, I think the cat owner should be asked to pay for the expenses so people think twice before calling the fire department. This can also act as potential revenue generator for the fire department.
after 1994 they get reformed and you could get some extra services on pay as you go… so to say…
Maybe I was wrong all along. Actually the fire service rescue cats because of this: ‘Three women were rescued from a fire at a flat in Essex after being woken by their cats.’
Good point. I think a lot of people take services like these for granted and believe that they’re essentially paying for it with taxes. That’s partly true, but if everyone thought that way and called the fire station for every cat stuck in their tree, than you could just do the math and figure that it’s going to be disastrous. Not just financially, but in the case when a real emergency happens and the fire crew are still trying to get the cat from the tree or engine or whatever.
I completely agree that this is a waste of government resources. If you see a cat that’s stuck in a tree or engine, figure out how to get the poor animal yourself. No need to go running to your phone to call the fire station–they have better things to do.
I’m inclined to think we are looking at the cold and not the symptoms here and it is something that holds true for all of our emergency and public services.When are we going to be realised, that we can’t have our cake and not pay for it, we have got grasp the nettle and understand that to have the safety net of public services we need and want, we have got to pay for them. Whilst it is good to reduce waste and inefficiency, we must wakeup to the fact that to be there when we need the system has… Read more »
@SFK Supervisor Well, we’ll never know on the last point. But I think your point about a ‘triage’ system is extremely valid. But then, isn’t that what the operators do to a point?
Rob, You should learn more about how fire and rescue services in the UK work before you pontificate about their use of resources. I don’t know about Cumbria, but typically, fire and rescue services only respond to animal rescues if called by the RSPCA. This means that they know that they are going to an animal that is genuinely at risk. The activities of fire and rescue services are determined locally. The local people who pay for those activities are consulted through the Integrated Risk Management Planning process. If Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service feel that rescuing animals may not… Read more »
I well remember when I first started in the fire service many years ago now and I was in the Watch Room and a lady made a 999 call stating that “her cat was stuck up a tree” As I was unsure of the actions to take I called the Sub Officer and put him into contact with the caller and his reply was very simple because he stated ” I am not prepared to put my mens lives at risk for a cat and if it was any consulation they had not found any skeletons of cats up trees”… Read more »
David, thanks for your comment. According to the report, it was the Police in this case that recommended calling the fire service. As I said, it’s very much back of a fag packet maths, and a jumping off point for this whole discussion. I certainly agree the fire service is caring and generally well run, though undoubtedly the service is under threat. Arguably, 2.5 hours spent fitting smoke alarms could save several lives, so proportionately is probably worth it?
As I said at the start of the article, it seems to be the classic cartoon stereotype. Interesting to know your sub officer had some clear ideas on this. Are there any hard and fast guidelines?
Rob, So in your article you chose not to mention that it was a police officer who was of the view that the cat’s life was in danger and needed rescuing by the emergency services. But in good journalistic tradition, you left out this vital piece of information and made your story sound worse than it was. Was it sensible use of the resources of Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service? You might not think so Rob, but the officer in charge of the fire appliance thought it was or they would have gone back to the station and the police… Read more »
I did link through to the full original story, David, which you can see here. It wrote ”They [the couple] contacted the police who told them to call the Fire Brigade.’ I’m not sure it’s a crucial detail, but appreciate your point, thank you. I also agree they would have had a far better grasp of the situation, and just to be clear, I’m not criticising the fire service in any way. I’m simply asking whether or not it’s a valid use of officers time. Great to have your thoughts, David
While you have ‘linked’ to the full story you certainly did not reflect the full picture in your piece. You cherry picked the aspect of the article to form your argument but deliberately left out information that would have made the piece more balanced instead it was significantly weighted towards your criticism of how the emergency service deployed a resource! You may have an opinion but in times when people are under huge pressure to demonstrate value etc do you really think picking on this topic to voice your opinion the way you did was really useful? Would it serve… Read more »
I don’t think Rob was trying to irritate anyone here. He was trying to make the point that resources are being spent to save cats, while human lives could be saved. I think the situation you presented isn’t fair; you can’t compare a human child to a cat. Let me say that I love animals and have pets myself. If my dog is in trouble and I need help, I might even call the local fire station. But let’s say that at the same time, there’s a fire emergency in another part of town and people are trapped in the… Read more »
To each their own.
I think Rob was merely giving his take on the matter. There’s nothing wrong with that. As are you, David.
However, I don’t think there was any need to take a cheap shot by ending your comment with “I think that they probably had a much better grasp of the situation than you do in your comfortable office hundreds of miles away.” There’s no need for jibes.
If you make a decision to publicly critic the judgement of a person in this case the fireofficer who decided to go ahead an free the cat then you have an oblibation to present the full facts…a mere “link” to the full story is a cop out and he knew that. It is too easy to critic from a desk after the event .. any comparison can be made when you use the basis that was propsed….yes it was ridiculous-point made and if you are goint to ” quote ” someone do it accurately!
Human life vs animal life, it’s an interesting question. As I say, I’m not really coming down on one side with this whole thing, I’m more just posing the question. I apologise if you felt I didn’t fully represent the nuances of this particular story, truly I do.
Yes, one of the things I hope is that should a call threatening human life have come in this particular crew would have been able to be redeployed. Some of the comments here satisfy me that they would, which is great. I suppose there’s another point: better that fire officers are using their time valuably by saving animals in distress rather than just waiting for a ‘worthy’ emergency to come in?
PS. Was this article the best use of my time? Probably not, if we’re honest, shall we move on? @Melanie Davies if you’d be interested in an article reposte, or to just move on to something else, I’d love to hear from you. Drop us an email on editors@IFSEC Insider.com and I’d love to discuss more.
Well Rob you got us all thinking – Now half the bloggers want your head on a stake and the other half want to promote you to the home office. We all have an opinion but can you imagine the headlines. ‘Firecrew abandons kitten to die to tackle street bin fire’ Certainly any old hands will have been used to rescue pigeons trapped in trees with fishing line on their legs, get the odd sparrow out of a chimney, rescue a horse, cow, pig, sheep from a bog, stream, river or cess pit. I even lifted floor boards to rescue… Read more »
Is always a difficult thing to address, as the title of their job or industry can lead to assumptions of one thing or another! They are called the Fire & Rescue service, but surely this is aimed at their paymasters, the general public and that their duty is to people who need rescusing and not animals! Their primary role is to fight fires and someone pointed towards making a comparison to leaving a kitten to die or putting out a bin fire! Well the latter is part of their job and certainly more timeworthy than the previous. I would have… Read more »
I don’t think I want my head on a stake or to work in the Home Office. You’re right of course, the backlash if authorities did nothing would be pretty big, too. You simply can’t win sometimes.
Gosh Finbar What a hard man you are – Distress to those around the kitten and they car owners is what it’s all about trying to passify and assist – The LFB would not answer some of these calls referring to the RSPCA – BUT if the RSPCA asked for help it was freely given. The costs are immaterial what is certain is the brownie points given but those involved to their local services – Else why not carry a pistol and just shoot them? Firemen spend a lot of time just ‘waiting’ and are experts in using their brains… Read more »
Clearly this article was a great use of your time. It provoked 32 posts in response, to date (33 with this one), had folks weighing in on both sides of the issue, and illustrated that there are more than fifty shades of grey to a seemingly black and white issue. As far as the issue, I think at some level we have to trust that all involved properly assessed the situation and acted appropriately. My personal preference would have been for the fire department to say no — it is far more likely that the owner would have found someone… Read more »
interesting point… but in reality we all pay for it… but like I said before I never did see a dead cat on the tree in Eastern Europe… time/money – get wasted… on one cat…
At risk of stoking the fires on this debate again, London Fire Brigade released a story last week saying that they have been able to reduce the number of animal rescues they take part in. They have saved around £100,000 by encouraging people to call the RSPCA instead of dialling 999:
“As well as being time consuming, animal rescues cost the tax payer and I’m sure most people would prefer their money was being spent on training or fire prevention work, than cats up trees.”