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 - Please could you inform me of the numbers of incidents your brigade has attended for fires on: electric buses (where the battery was believed to be the cause of the fire)?
Essex County Fire & Rescue Service (ECFRS) have attended one incident involving a Hybrid powered bus.
Question 2 -. hybrid-powered buses (those with duel power; electric and usually diesel or petrol where the battery or hybrid power supply was believed to be the cause of the fire)?If you could break that down for the (financial or calendar) years for 2023, 2022 and 2021, if that data is available. If there have been any such incidents this year (2024), I would also like to receive that.
This incident occurred on 7th October 2022 in Basildon.
We have no records of attending any other incidents involving electric/hybrid powered buses.
Question 3 - Based on the assumption that such incidents are relatively low, can you provide details of each incident, including perhaps the when, where, owner of the vehicle (i.e. is it a public transport bus, minibus, schoolbus, double-decker, single-decker etc) and any other recorded particulars about the nature of the fire i.e. was the fire localised to the battery, did it spread, was the vehicle burnt out, were any other vehicles of buildings ignited, how many appliances and firefighters were in attendance, how long did it take to extinguish the fire/make it safe and were there reports of any injuries?
The fire was deemed as accidental, having stated in the cargo section of the bus, a fault in the internal wiring insulation was deemed to be responsible for the fire. ECFRS attended this incident with three of our pumping appliances to extinguish the fire. There was no spread of the fire and no injuries/fatalities were recorded at the scene.
Question 4 - Again, based on the assumption that such incidents are infrequent, was the fire service ever required to write a report on any of the incidents. If so, could I have a copy of any such reports? I accept that may involve some redactions.
Every incident that we attend will be recorded in our Incident Recording system, this system allows us to extract data to summarise the incident in a Fire Report. Please find attached the report for the incident described above.
We hope this information is useful to you.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
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.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
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