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The Fire and Rescue Service have a legal responsibility to deal with fires that cause damage to any property. We attend fires in buildings of all types and sizes. These range from small fires involving sheds, garages, houses, small shops, etc. through to large scale fires involving factories, shopping centres, high flats, etc. We also deal with fires in buildings of high cultural or historical interest (ie. museums, galleries, protected buildings, etc.) where salvage work would be of great importance. A prime example of this is the major fire in Edinburgh’s Cowgate in 2002, which involved many properties of historical value. Salvage work is also crucial in any property housing anything of great monetary value, such as, computer suites, banks, etc.
We also deal with many fires involving vehicles. These can range from small private cars to large road haulage vehicles. The incident could vary in size from a small domestic car on a small country lane to a multi-lane pile up on a major motorway involving many casualties and vehicles of different types. The fires can involve the vehicles themselves (ie. engine compartment, passenger compartment, etc.) or the load the vehicles are carrying (ie. goods, chemicals, etc.). We also deal with fires in other modes of transport such as trains, aircraft, etc.
The Fire and Rescue Service deal with many different kinds of rural fires. These include fires involving grass, gorse, crops, woodland, etc. These fires can range in size from a few square metres to many hectares, which may take days and a huge amount of resources to overcome.
We also attend fires involving rubbish, whether they involve bins alight or fires on open ground, as they may spread and cause structural damage to neighbouring property or harm the surrounding environment or the health of members of the public.
Because of the differing types of fires and vast complexity of materials involved, many different types of extinguishing media are used in firefighting. As well as water, we also use foams, dry powders and CO2 and we continue to monitor advancements in technology in order to seek out new firefighting media for the future.
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