UK Fire & Rescue trials for EC145
 

Eurocopter’s enhanced EC145 T2 helicopter to foster the company’s leadership in UK national resilience - Eurocopter, an EADS company

I believe in 1996, there were trials with a BK117 for the London Fire Brigade as well as the other services around the country and even as recent as 2005 with a 145

UK Emergency Aviation - UK Fire & Rescue Service Aviation Operations


Hope the recent trials become a success and be seeing (as with some countries - USA, France, Greece and Malaysia to name) parapublic helicopters in fire fighting colours.

Cheers

Avon Fire & Rescue had a demo with an EC145 in July of this year.

Trials with using helicopters to supervise fires, transport people and equipment rapidly etc etc will always be successful - it makes sense.
And the 2 previous trials re-confirmed this.

The age old problem as ever and especially during this economic time, is that the FIRE FIGHTING FRATERNITY NEVER HAVE AND NEVER WILL HAVE ENOUGH MONEY for such essentials!:ugh:

Blah blah blah, no money..............

I'm probably being a bit dull here, but why do our cash-strapped fire and rescue services think they need helicopters?

I haven't paid too much attention to this debate before, but one of the answers to the above question could be to do with the fact that none of Trumpton's ladders can reach above about 10 storeys. I should think a significant proportion of city buildings are taller than that. However, as others have pointed out, in these cupboard-is-bare times maybe we should just expect SAR to pick up this task along with the many others they already do so competently.

Don't know if W Mids Marxist Window Cleaners And Occasional Chip-Pan Extinguisher Operators still have their protocol with the police AOU which allowed them to receive downlink thermal images of major fires. Proved useful on a couple of occasions that I saw; they could assess roof-spaces and other areas where combustion could spread unseen from the ground, prior to committing firefighters into hazardous areas.

It still isn't going to happen since they need proper heavy-lift to provide that capability - I know an exercise was carried out with a chinook which was perfect for the job - but who will pay for that?

The other issue is that of weather - a big smash on a motorway in fog means no helicopter will get there so unless you have road-portable kit as well, you are stuffed. Urban SAR will require lifting kit into congested areas or rooftops and again, bad weather makes that near-impossible. In short, to cover all scenarios you would need a great deal of kit and some helicopters that wouldn't get used that often - a great aspiration but not in any way realistic.

Merseyside ASU often got tasked to take firemen up and assess the situation of grass fires. That capability can still be requested.

Helicopter International ran a sory on the Avon trials in its September issue.The FRS is now considering a lease apparently to carry out further trials.
Despite some initial sceptism it now seems to be a goer when one looks at the broad range of responsibilities the fire and rescue services have these days.

Yes a helicopter is a nice toy to have in the box but its cost effective use by fire and rescue in uk is probably very debatable esp when on rare occasions it was efficacious that can be achieved by usage of existing availablity of inter service resources. getting cutting crew to RTI not much use as very dodgy without a fire fighting capability in attendance , and that would have the cutting gear on board .

Just as long as Avon don't try the silly idea they originally spouted of using the helicopter to replace 5 or six road based rescue tenders.

A helicopter has a potential role in some rapid response scenarios, however, it's availability (daylight / weather / serviceability) will only ever allow it to be complimentary to ground based units.

As someone who knows quite a lot about helicopters and a fair bit about fire-fighting too - i can't see the numbers adding up unless you use it to replace ground units - and you can't do that with the level of availability and reliability that you need.

OH

W06 please forgive me but they wont be getting a fire supression facility of much use in a ec 145 with cutting gear and crew , thats part of what I was responding to, not a chinook et al. JMHO

The previous LFB trial was described to me like Thunderbird with different containers to be selected for different incidents :uhoh: ;)

Slightly more seriously, i would have thought the increasing number of wildfires might make it more likely. Although I believe in other places they use commercial aircraft for fire-fighting.

No winners lots of Loosers
 

I dont see the Ozzie Fire and Rescuse services running there own airwing , We have a greater area to cover than the UK does . So it must be something that the Govt has on there wish list and that might be cutting some other service.

Having been talking to some in the Fire service, the coverage in the event of major flooding, civil disturbances, Terrorist incident, CBRN, major transport disruption and major incident resillience coverage are the main reasons for looking at a Helicopter. No Mention of firefighting at all.

There were trials to carry fire fighters and cutting equipment done a couple of years ago but the weights involved (Police EC145) were not helping the aircraft performance. There have been huge advances in the cutting equipment power sources as well as the performance of the aircraft available so it appears the idea is back on the table.

Another thing that is a factor is that due to the economic climate there is a serious lack of part time firefighters in the rural areas as companies are finding it hard to let the staff go on calls during day hours. There are huge areas of the counties that are suffering gaps in cover that can leave incidents not attended for long periods.

FRS Helo
 

This will be at the expense of losing ground units and manning levels being cut back.

Not just fires.


Hope it has a winch fitted for getting cats out of trees ;)

MEAOW :) .Cannot see the Fire Oficer in command taking instructions from anyone other than a more senior Fire service officer. Aircrew? You'll do what your told ;)

so you could have half a dozen fire vehicles scattered unmanned across a rural county and fly a crew to them as required.

also, what about having simplex gear permanently rigged. Could fly out people, hop across to a lake, fill up and have fire fighting ability.