‘Crews at no greater risk, but we are scaling up testing’
A SPOKESPERSON for Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service said: “The health, safety and welfare of our staff and our communities has been a strategic priority for the service in response to Covid-19 since the pandemic began.
“Early intervention directed by the Chief Fire Officer ensured the development and implementation of Covid-secure procedures, including procurement of correct personal protection equipment (PPE), necessary face masks and cleaning materials, along with regularly-reviewed risk assessments of all fire service activity and this has been successful in ensuring a very low number of Covid cases in the service.
“Enormous amounts of work have been undertaken to ensure the wellbeing of our staff including continual communications with all our employees and the local Fire Brigades Union (FBU) to support the workforce throughout the pandemic.
“We are in the process of introducing lateral flow testing (which takes just 30 minutes to get a result) on a wider scale, after initially having to prioritise, given the limited number of tests available to us at the time.
“This more wholescale approach is being rolled out in accordance with Government guidance, and is now possible due to greater numbers of testing kits being made available.
“Therefore, we have been working with the Department for Health and Social Care to set up asymptomatic (checks for people who are not showing signs of the virus) testing sites as swiftly as possible.
“Prior to these sites being set up internally we have regularly signposted staff to mobile and mass testing sites and supported the FBU in advising staff, including firefighters that they can attend testing sites as their shifts commence.
“The chief fire officer, along with his counterparts in the National Fire Chiefs Council, have been lobbying Government for vaccinations for fire and rescue staff. We understand this is a similar position to that of our police colleagues nationally.
“While this lobbying continues, it is important to stress our firefighters and other staff do not experience the same level of exposure in their roles as others who are undertaking specific work relating to the pandemic. Where firefighters could be at risk, for example at a road traffic collision, there are many safety measures in place to ensure their well-being and safety. The Government has identified a list of nine priority groups to receive the vaccination, there is no evidence to suggest fire and rescue employees along with others not in the top nine groups are at a higher risk than these.”
On the topic of safe and well checks – visits to the homes of the most vulnerable – the spokesperson said: “Since December the service has responded to six fatal fires and several serious fires.
“These fires underline why we must continue to deliver the face-to-face interventions that can prevent such fires from happening.
“Our work is to ‘Make Derbyshire Safer Together’, so we simply cannot sit back and not carry out these lifesaving interventions, but of course we are carrying these out with all of the necessary risk assessments, PPE and Covid-secure measures possible to protect those receiving our visits, our staff delivering them and of course their families, too.”