Fire brigades: Did you know...

London has the only regional fire brigade in England
There are 46 fire and rescue services in England. County councils provide 15 fire brigades and the rest are separate statutory bodies known as combined or metropolitan fire services. London has the only regional fire brigade. Each service is accountable to a fire authority of locally elected councillors.

Fire brigades spent over £2 billion in 2006
Collectively, fire brigades spent over £2.1 billion in 2006/2007, which comes from a mix of council tax and government grants. The overall cost of fire to the economy of England and Wales is estimated at almost £7 billion per year.

Over 50,000 people are employed by fire brigades
Fire brigades collectively employ around 50,000 people in England, including nearly 43,000 firefighters, 6,000 support staff and 1,400 control staff. Around two-thirds of all fire stations are staffed by retained or volunteer firefighters—they may have other jobs, but will drop everything in an emergency to take up their fire brigade duties.

The Romans led the way with the first fire brigade
A great fire in 6 AD resulted in almost a quarter of Rome being destroyed, prompting Emperor Augustus to organise a fire brigade known as the corps of vigiles.

The first English fire brigades emerged after 1666 through insurance companies
After the Great Fire of London in 1666, the City was divided into quarters, with residents in each paying an insurance premium to cover the cost of a fire. Plaques were fastened to the outside of buildings, to show which insurance company fire brigade would put out the fire.

There are more than 50,000 fires in British homes each year
That's 140 a day, many of which are attended by the local fire brigade. While the number of deaths from fire has fallen over the last quarter century the number of injuries has nearly doubled in that time, to 14,800 in 2001.

The fire brigade—versatile in an emergency
Besides putting out fires and rescuing people from them, the fire brigade is also responsible for many other duties, including attending road traffic collisions, rescuing people from outdoor heights and indoor lifts, helping ambulances with casualties, rescuing people from confined spaces, attending aircraft incidents, hazardous materials incidents, floods and of course, saving animals from sticky situations.