Is Saving Cats a Good Use of a Fire Crew’s Time?

It’s the classic cartoon rescue for fire services — the cat stuck in the tree. A heroic team of burly men bravely climb their ladder and rescue the poor moggy stuck on a high branch after having thought itself more capable of climbing than its species necessarily dictates.

But things have moved on. This week, I came across a story of a fire crew in Carlisle who rescued a kitten from the engine of a car — its new owners then christened it “Miracle.”

Perfect local newspaper feel-good news complete with a ready-to-go pun (“It’s not every day that you lift the bonnet of your car and find a little Miracle”). The partner of the car’s owner, Carol Milnes, told her local paper:

It took two and a half hours but they appreciated it was a living creature. It was completely stuck. But the fireman in charge, Steve Graham, said he’d never before seen anything like it. They really were wonderful.

I’m sorry, two and a half hours!? Is this really an acceptable use of Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service’s time amid a national picture of huge budget cuts to fire services?

Presumably (and I say this seeking an answer from any current or former firefighters) the fire crew from Carlisle would have been available to leave in favour of a greater emergency should the need arise?

But it would have taken them some time to get away, given that, according to the report, they were underneath the car with inflatable airbags. Essentially though, all the fire crew did was lift the car (which could have been done by a mechanic) and removed a wheel (which could have been done by anyone with a car).

Now, I’m not necessarily blaming the fire service for this. They responded to an emergency call, as per their duty, and once on the scene it would have been a bit awkward to say, “What a waste of time, just call a mechanic.”_But when you consider the resources that have gone into this, should those costs be passed on to the member of the public that made the call?

How much does it cost to send a fire engine out?
An exact figure of how much a 2.5-hour call out would cost the Cumbrian council tax payer is hard to work out, but we can make some informed guesses.

London Fire Brigade estimate that the 40,734 false call-outs they received in 2012 cost GB pound 37 million, so on that basis the average call-out costs them about GB pound 908 — a decent approximate figure we can use for Cumbria, given no similar figures are readily available.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service states in its 2012/13 service plan that the minimum crew size per appliance is four. Again, pay figures from Cumbria are hard to find, but Staffordshire FRS puts its basic hourly rate for a competent firefighter is GB pound 13.

So the time the staff spent attending the incident, plus the 6 minutes average time to respond to an incident and the 9-minute drive back would have cost the fire service another GB pound 143.

This adds up to a highly approximate GB pound 1,051 to save a cat from a car bonnet.

Call me a miserable pedant by all means, but should we really be celebrating this? Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service states among its key results that it aims to achieve “an effective and proportionate response.”

You can’t fault the fire crews for effectiveness, but proportionate? I’m not so sure.