Essex County Fire and Rescue Service
Essex used to operate four day-crewed fire stations, located at Dovercourt (Harwich), South Woodham Ferrers, Great Baddow and Waltham Abbey, but, following a 2016 consultation,[4] these have been changed to retained-only status.Major risks covered include Stansted and Southend airport, Harwich seaport, Lakeside shopping centre, Tilbury Docks, London Gateway, part of the M25 and M11 motorways, A127 and A12 road and 13 top-tier COMAH sites.Another primary role of the service is preventive community safety work; in 2010, ECFRS fitted over 7,000 smoke alarms in houses across the county.The control staff also carry out incident co-ordination, appliance mobilisation and movements to ensure strategic fire cover.These pods include hose layers and high-volume pumps, technical rescue, timber for shoring up unstable structures, and even a multi-purpose skid loader that can access tight spaces, explore voids, and move heavy loads of debris.Following the September 11 attacks, new risks were identified for which rescue services would need to be better prepared, and the British government responded with the announcement that USAR units were to be established throughout the country.The station commander at Lexden, a specialist co-ordinator of search and rescue operations, was also sent with the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to Haiti in January 2010 after a major earthquake struck the country.[16] Formed in 1992, the UK's ISAR team comprises specialist search and rescue officers drawn from 13 brigades who are on call 24 hours a day.Essex was also one of 16 brigades called in to attend the Buncefield oil depot fire near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, in December 2005.