Firefighters in Derbyshire rescued nearly 100 obese people last year

Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service published their ‘Our Year’ annual report, in which they revealed they attended a total of 7,175 incidents between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023.

Of these around one in six incidents were deliberate fires with 1,200 recorded: a 22% increase on the previous 12 months.

And the fire service carried out 96 bariatric rescues - where specialist crews are required to extract obese people - during the same time period. That figure is more than quadruple the number of rescues (23) carried out in 2018/19.

In 2016, DFRS came under flak for investing £280,000 in a specialist off-road truck, dubbed The Brute, with a mounted crane in order to rescue obese people.

Last year firefighters were called to ‘animal assistance incidents’ on 92 occasions, flooding and water rescue incidents 55 times, and to 54 incidents involving suicide attempts.

The service consists of 929 people with 358 full-time firefighters and 346 on-call responders 12% of the operational workforce is from minority groups with 15% being female.

Area Manager Clive Stanbrook said: "Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service is aware of the gradual increase in complex rescues and is monitoring this trend on a regular basis.

"We work extensively with our partners in East Midlands Ambulance Service in order to assess the ongoing joint response required for these types of rescues and if this is commensurate with our statutory responsibility to the communities of Derbyshire.

"We are also active members of the Derby and Derbyshire Health and Wellbeing Boards where we are continuously striving with our partners to ensure that all people in Derbyshire are enabled to live healthy lives, which will impact positively the future need for resources at complex rescues.

"The number of complex rescues we are mobilised to currently falls within our community risk management plan. With our wider medical partners, we continue to monitor and review the resources needed to support these rescues and at this time there is no plan to increase service provision."

The fire service did not confirm if they would be purchasing more specialist equipment.