Firefighters have resorted to taking people to hospital in fire engines amid rocketing call-outs to medical emergencies.
Fire and rescue services now respond to more “non-fire incidents” than fires in England, including cardiac arrests, suicide attempts and elderly people trapped in their homes after falls.
Official statistics show that they attended more than 18,200 medical incidents in 2021-22, an increase of a third from the previous year, and that firefighters rather than ambulances were the “first responder” in almost half of those calls.
Chris Lowther, who chairs the National Fire Chiefs’ Council’s operations committee, said the figures showed a “new reality” as firefighters step in to help struggling ambulance services.
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“What firefighters are being asked to do now is not what we were asked to do 10 years ago,” he told The Independent.
“We are having to deal with incidents where in the past there would have been health colleagues on the scene sooner.”
Mr Lowther, who has been a firefighter in Tyne and Wear for more than two decades, said his colleagues aim to provide the necessary medical treatment at the scene before ambulances transport people to hospital.
But he added that in situations where firefighters are concerned for someone’s safety facing a long wait, “some officers have made the decision to transport someone to hospital in a fire engine”.
“It’s not something I could condone because they’re only designed to carry trained firefighters, but I understand the pressures officers have faced in the past,” he added.
Andy Dark, assistant general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), said it would “not be in the interest of patients for that to be common practice” but that sometimes firefighters “take the initiative out of frustration or extreme concern”.
Mr Dark said crews were sometimes sent to medical incidents as first responders when the ambulance service can’t get there.
“Sometimes they do it when they’re not really sure what the call is, they’ll send the fire service to have a look and they don’t mobilise an ambulance,” he added.
“That’s a real source of frustration because if it’s someone who has a serious medical condition, particularly heart attacks, we’ve got no way to cart them off to hospital safely.”
Mr Dark said that some firefighters had been left traumatised after being sent to calls where people have died in their homes, adding: “We’re used to saving life, we’re not used to thinking we’ve failed.
“Essentially they found themselves attending to guard the body awaiting the eventual arrival of a doctor.”
Fire services are also sent to incidents where paramedics are unable to access people who are unwell or move them safely to an ambulance, and to attempted suicides where people are on bridges or other high places.
In 2021-22, fire brigades attended 2,583 suicides and attempted suicides in England, with the figure rocketing by almost a quarter in a year.
Mr Lowther said the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service was called to a particular hotspot almost every day, sometimes seeing the same people on multiple occasions.
Friefighters have been tackling wildfires during the unprecedented summer heatwave
