Thank you for your request under the Environmental Information Regulations.
We can confirm that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service (ECFRS) does hold the information you have requested.
Please see below the answer to your request.
Questions and final response: I have been tasked to produce a risk assessment of how we would extract someone from an apiary (collection of live bee hives) should they fall or collapse.
The view is a Paramedic would not risk multiple stings.
Without a mesh veil I would not advocate anyone gets too close to a hive with the roof off.
Have you ever had to execute a rescue in this scenario?
Is there anyone I could liaise with?
Response:
East of England Ambulance Service would be the agency tasked with an incident of this nature, medical emergency.
The first responder on scene will complete a dynamic risk assessment to determine if they require assistance with extricating the casualty to a place of safety. If this is the case, they will call upon their own Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) in the first instance.
Should the ambulance service HART team not be available, ECFRS may well be tasked to assist.
The Essex County Fire & Rescue Service response to ‘Assist other agency’ would be the nearest available pumping appliance.
Two service personnel wearing full firefighting personal protective equipment, including breathing apparatus, could perform a rescue and remove the casualty from the risk area and place them in care of the ambulance service.
Additionally, we have searched our Incident Recording System for any similar incidents that we have attended in the previous five years and unable to find any related incidents using the key words: Beehives, Apiary and Bees.
We hope this information is useful to you.
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Incident and other data is published on our transparency site. Incident Data (essex- fire.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.
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