Northamptonshire fire chief's plea to think before you dial 999 during coronavirus crisis

Northamptonshire's fire chief is begging the county's residents to only dial 999 in a genuine emergency.

Chief Fire Officer Darren Dovey says the service can cope with the coronavirus crisis but needs the public's help to avoid stretching resources unnecessarily.

.Northamptonshire Fire & Rescue's Twitter feed gave details of six callouts in a three-hour period county-wide on Wednesday (March 25).

Three involved burning rubbish, one was a faulty carbon monoxide monitor and one a false alarm.

In a video posted on social media, Mr Dovey said: "Our priorities remain taking 999 calls — but I would please urge that you only dial 999 in an emergency.

"We obviously will still be providing an emergency response. As a service, we do have robust plans in place, so should the situation deteriorate over the next couple of months, we can still continue to provide those critical services.

"We're also providing very high-risk asvice to those that are more vulnerable in the community in terms of fire safety and prevention. If you need more advice go to our website northantsfire.gov.uk or look out for information we're providing across all lour social media platforms over the coming weeks and months."

The Fire & Rescue Service team of protection officers are also making telephone contact with all the county’s nursing, care homes and sheltered housing providers to answer any fire safety concerns, reviewing risks remotely by photo or video.

Protection Manager Scott Richards said: “Although we are currently having to dial back on our proactive work, we are keen to let people know that we are still doing whatever possible to help protect the vulnerable from potential fire risk.

“We are very much here to take action on fire risk when it is identified and we also welcome approaches from businesses and housing providers if they don’t want to wait to be contacted and would rather seek out our advice on an urgent fire issue.

“The Covid-19 outbreak also potentially poses care and nursing homes with staffing issues, which is important to us as we know a certain number of trained staff have to be on site to carry out fire evacuations properly. If any providers are worried about this, then they should contact us urgently.”

To contact NFRS, ring 01604 797000 and ask to speak to the protection department or email [email protected]