How we respond to keep Essex safe
Essex is a county full of contrasts - from busy towns and coastal communities to rural villages and growing cities. The people who live, work, and travel here have a wide range of needs, and we're here to help keep them safe.
Our headquarters and control centre are based at Kelvedon Park in Kelvedon, where we coordinate our prevention, protection and emergency response services. We operate from 50 fire stations across the county, supported by a dedicated Urban Search and Rescue facility.
We’re proud to serve 1.88 million residents, making us one of the largest fire and rescue services in the country. Essex is home to major airports at Stansted and Southend, the seaport at Harwich, Tilbury docks, Lakeside shopping centre, key sections of the M25 and M11 motorways and seven underground stations.
Wherever you are in Essex, we’re here when you need us most - making Essex safer together.
Do you know what happens when you dial 999?
If there is an emergency and you need the fire and rescue service, always dial 999. You can do this from any private, public or mobile phone for free. There is also a British Sign Language app that can connect you to an interpreter.
When you call 999 our Control Room Officers will work to reassure you while a crew are on their way to you. Usually this is the closest crew but it could be a crew that has specialist equipment, like our Animal Rescue Unit which is based in Chelmsford or our Swift Water Rescue trained firefighters who are based around the county.
Not only does the Control Room answers emergency calls, but the team also works to move resources to different areas in the county based on risk. We carefully monitor and analyse the risk factors in each area and the Control Room moves crews around the county as needed to cover Essex effectively and safely.
On a typical day, we attend around 70 incidents – seven fires, 24 false alarms and 39 special services (non fire incidents that require our help).
Craig McLellan, Assistant Director of Response
“In Essex, we have 50 fire stations with a range of different equipment at different stations and our priority is to get to you as quick as we can when you need us.
“A number of our fire stations are designated core stations and this means that when a crew leaves a core station to attend an incident or for training, our Control Room will send a new crew from elsewhere in the county so we are ready to deploy firefighters when we’re called.
“Our crews across Essex are made up of fully trained firefighters, both wholetime and on-call, who can be moved around the county to maximise our resources. Our dedicated on-call firefighters, who all live or work within five minutes of an on-call fire station, give us more flexibility to respond to emergencies while using resources efficiently.
“Some areas of the county have less incidents than others, so we move our firefighters around to help them gain experience in dealing with a variety of incidents in different types of location.
“Keeping people safe is our priority, we want to prevent incidents from happening in the first place and work in communities to prevent fires, water and road incidents across Essex. Our vital prevention and protection work helps to reduce the risk of fire at home or in the workplace.”
