How we publish incidents on our website (https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/how-we-publish-incidents-our-website)

How we publish incidents on our website

We share information on our website about the incidents we attend in a couple of different ways. We sometimes share details of the incident and what's happened on our incident pages. We also publish figures for the numbers of incidents we've attended.

Incident details

Fire Control publish details of incidents on our website which are:

of interest to our communities and the media
likely to cause disruption such as a road traffic collision.

We are not able to publish details for every incident that the Service attends.

We make every effort to update the website with information about an incident as soon as possible. Our response to incidents will always take priority so there may sometimes be a delay.

The incident map displays the latest 10 incidents that have been published.

Further information

You can find more detailed statistics about the Service on gov.uk (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fire-statistics-great-britain).

Incident statistics

To give an overview of the incidents that we attend, we publish some statistics on our website. To allow us to provide information as quickly as possible, we base these statistics on data from our mobilising system.

Once our crews confirm they're in attendance at an incident it will display on the website. The figures are liable to change due to the nature of the incidents we attend.

Sometimes, when we attend an incident it turns out to be something different to what was identified when we received the 999 call, so these figures may be subject to change.

Our fire officers also provide information on incidents to the Home Office (see further information), based on what they encountered when they attended the incident. The categories within the Home Office system and our mobilisation system vary slightly and are not directly comparable.

Incident figures update via an automated feed every five minutes.

What’s included in the incident statistics

We have four different categories for showing incidents on the website.

Fires

Grey

Fires include any incident we’ve attended involving a fire. This could be a property fire, commercial fire or fire involving a car or method of transportation e.g. train.

Rescues

Grey

This includes any incident where we’ve rescued a person or animal.

False alarms

Grey

Includes details of calls we’ve received that turned out to be a false alarm or an unnecessary call out.

Others

Grey

This category consists of several different types of incidents, such as:

flooding
incidents involving hazardous materials
where we’ve assisted another agency e.g. police or ambulance
co-responding or medical incidents
helping people trapped in a lift or locked in.

What's not included

These figures do not include:

incidents we've attended outside of Devon and Somerset
incidents attended by other fire and rescue services in Devon and Somerset
the number of 999 calls received.

Further information

You can find more detailed statistics about the Service on gov.uk (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fire-statistics-great-britain).