Thank you for your request under the Environmental Information Regulations.
We can confirm that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service does hold the information you have requested.
Please see below the answer to your request.
Questions and final response:
Question 1 - Can I please request, in the form of a spreadsheet such as Excel or CSV file, information on wildfires attended by the fire and rescue service.I would like the total number of wildfires recorded by the fire and rescue service, broken down by month, for the calendar years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 (to date)?
I can confirm that a total of 212 wildfires have been attended by Essex County Fire & Rescue Service (ECFRS) between the 1st January 2017 and the 30th November 2023.
The breakdown of this number by year and month is given in the results table in the attached excel file.
Question - 2. In a separate tab I would like details of each wildfire incident. Please include Date of incident, Time of day incident reported, Incident duration (minutes), Location (please include longitude and latitude and local authority if available) Cause of wildfire (if available) Size of area damaged by wildfire (square meters if available) Total number of buildings affected, Total number of dwellings affected, Total number of firefighters injured, seriously injured, or killed. I would like the information to be based on the NOG definition of a wildfire.
Data for the geographical area of wildfires and the sustained flame length of a fire are not recorded on our systems.
Practically, all fires attended by ECFRS present a serious threat to life, environment, property, or infrastructure.
For this reason, I have considered all fire incidents attended by ECFRS, that either had four or more appliances attend the incident or that required a resource to be committed for at least six hours, taking place on grasslands, pastures, and grazing grounds, as wildfires. By doing this, I have worked out the number of actual wildfires attended by ECFRS according to the National Operational Guidance (NOG) definition of a wildfire.
The second tab in the excel file attached details these incidents. Data on the size of the area damaged by wildfire (square meters if available), the total number of buildings affected, the total number of dwellings affected, and the number of firefighters injured, seriously injured, or killed for these incidents, is either not available within the Incident Recording System or is not recorded accurately within the system.
For these reasons we are unable to provide a response for this part of the request.
We hope this information is useful to you.
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Incident and other data is published on our transparency site. Incident Data (essexfire.gov.uk) . Please note that the response and data released to you as part of this request will be published on our website http://transparency.essex-fire.gov.uk/.
All requests will be anonymised and no personal information including contact details will be disclosed as part of this process.
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Thank you for your interest in Essex County Fire and Rescue Service, we hope this satisfies your request.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to apply for an internal review.
Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of your original email and should be sent to informationgovernance@essex-fire.gov.uk or sent to our postal address: Internal Review, System & Data Information Governance Team, Kelvedon Park, Rivenhall, Witham, Essex CM8 3HB.
Please ensure you quote the above reference number in all future communications