During part of the first national lockdown nearly 53% of fires responded to by the Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service were deliberately set.
From March 23rd the UK was placed in a state of national lockdown, with the population told to stay at home unless you were a key worker, which included a variety of job roles including the emergency services.
However from April 1st until June 30th there were 20,436 deliberate fires started in England which firefighters had to respond to, of these Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service responded 456 deliberate fires.
These deliberate fires made up 17% of all their responses, as during this period the NFRC responded to 2582 incidents, 866 of which were fires.
Fires are split into three categories, primary fires involve a non-derelict building, vehicle, outdoor structure, fatality, casualty, rescue, or were attended by at least 5 pumping appliances.
Whereas secondary fires refer to a small outdoor fire which doesn’t involve people or property, and chimney fires refer to fires contained within the chimney structure.
Of the deliberate fires set across Nottinghamshire during the months of the first lockdown, 106 are classed as primary and 351 are secondary. With the majority of primary fires involving road vehicles.
Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Communications Officer, Millie Broome, said: “In most cases we have seen a decrease in Deliberate Fires.
“Deliberate fires can cause health problems and environmental problems. We recently launched a campaign in Harworth around fire setting.”
Campaigns to tackle fire setting, such as the one in Harworth, have proved to help decrease the amount of deliberate fires in recent months.
However compared to neighbouring counties Nottingham has had the highest amount of deliberately set fires for the last year of available data. With Nottingham having over 300% more fires than Lincolnshire during the April to June lockdown period earlier this year.
Collingham Station Firefighter, Chantelle Haywood, 20, said: “We are surprised on the amount of deliberate fires but it’s what we are trained to deal with.
“Some of the consequences aren’t very nice but we have to deal with them in a professional manner.”
