Inside a cavernous screen-filled room on an industrial estate in south London, all is quiet. “Actually we don’t use the word ‘quiet’, we prefer ‘not busy’,” says Alex Smith, assistant operations manager at London fire brigade’s 999 control centre. “You never know what’s coming next.”
2017 has been an unusually demanding year for the fire brigade: terror attacks in Westminster, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Parsons Green, and the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in which 71 people died.
On the night of the Grenfell fire, hundreds of 999 calls were taken, and control room operators heard the desperate anguish of some of those trapped in the tower. Afterwards, the London fire brigade (LFB) commissioner, Dany Cotton, flagged up concerns about the mental health and wellbeing of staff.
“Our firefighters and control officers did absolutely everything they possibly could on the night of the Grenfell fire, and their welfare, along with the welfare of the 999 operators involved in taking the emergency calls from that building on the night, is an absolute priority,” Cotton said.
Smith, along with all other LFB employees, is under instruction not to talk to the media about Grenfell until the police investigation and public inquiry have finished taking evidence. But the Guardian was invited to visit the LFB control centre to see the work 999 operators do.
The frontline emergency services are frequently – and rightly – hailed for their heroism and dedication, but control room officers – the hidden emergency service – get less acknowledgement for the critical role they play.
“There are times when I go home and feel down, that’s part and parcel of my job. But other times I think, yeah, I did alright there,” says Smith, 38. “Survival calls are obviously not nice, you feel for [the callers]. To hear the panic in someone’s voice is distressing for us.”
The centre, responsible for the geographical area inside the M25, opened in January 2012. The hangar-like building is highly resilient, with reinforced walls to withstand attack or natural disaster, and capable of surviving on generators for seven days in the event of catastrophic power loss. Security is tight: the building is designated as one of “critical national infrastructure”, ready to become a command and control centre should the LFB headquarters in central London be out of commission.
Last year more than 100 staff working round-the-clock shifts fielded 173,264 emergency calls, an average of 481 each day. Of those, 1.3% were “malicious false alarms” and a further 2.4% were categorised as “calls challenged (and not attended)”. The control room operators dispatch engines and crews from 102 fire stations in the capital plus a river station.
As well as fires, they deal with road traffic accidents, train crashes, flooding, river incidents and people needing rescuing from heights – and they work closely with ambulance and police emergency services.
“You have to take quick decisions and need to remain calm. You can’t afford to get flustered or upset,” says Smith. “It can be stressful, but you’re never on your own – we help each other get the job done.”
Her computer screen lights up with an incoming call. A woman from north-west London says her neighbour’s smoke alarm has been sounding for 10 minutes but there was no response when she knocked on the door. “The fire brigade is on its way,” says Smith.
A man reports a smoking litter bin outside an H&M store at Oxford Circus. Another calls to report a suspected leaking gas pipe in a garage on a south London housing estate. Each time, Smith identifies the exact location, alerts the nearest available fire crew and tracks the fire engine as it heads to the incident. All calls are recorded and every action is logged by the computer.
Part of her job is to ensure that no area is left exposed by the deployment of fire engines. “So if there’s a big incident in, say, east London, we need to move appliances around to make sure all areas have cover.”
The day before, a caller had reported a fire on an industrial estate in Ponders End at 9.14am. By 9.45am there were 12 “pumps” – fire engines – on the scene, and it took almost six hours to get the blaze under control. The last fire engine left the site more than 26 hours later.
On the night of the Grenfell fire, 40 fire engines and more than 200 firefighters were deployed, the first arriving just six minutes after the first 999 was received at 12.55am. An “aerial ladder platform”, the tallest in the UK, with a reach of 42 metres, was called into service from the Surrey fire brigade.
Matt Wrack, the head of the Fire Brigades Union, later said the first fire crews to attend Grenfell were frustrated about the time it took to send backup engines. He blamed cuts to the service. “There have been fire station closures and fire engines axed. Some firefighters who were there have said to me that a quicker response earlier might have made a difference,” he said.
Ten London fire stations closed in January 2014, and 552 firefighters lost their jobs. But the cuts were on the back of a huge fall in the number of 999 calls – down from 272,346 in 2005 to 171,730 in 2014 – said Tom George, LFB’s director of operations.
The reasons for the drop included greater public awareness of fire risks, a massive increase in smoke alarms installed in people’s homes, changes in regulations covering furniture and building design, and a greater focus on prevention by the fire brigade.
“The Grenfell inquiry will look at the resources we sent to that incident. I can’t go into details but the commissioner [Dany Cotton] and I have been very clear that we have enough resources to cover London. We’re always reviewing this and looking to make improvements,” said George.
The fire service’s advice to residents to stay in their flats and await rescue has been questioned in the aftermath of Grenfell. The fire brigade has said it cannot comment on this while the public inquiry and police investigation are under way.
Back in the control centre, the mix of calls includes hoaxers and time-wasters. “My personal favourite is a man who called 999 because there was a ladybird in his lampshade,” says Smith. Spiders, fighting dogs, trapped squirrels and foxes all feature on an LFB list of strange calls.
There are abusive callers and people who want to engage control room operators in sex talk. “I couldn’t repeat the names I’ve been called,” Smith says. There are also a few regular callers (“Some are just a bit lonely. You get to know them by name”) and child pranksters (“Your mum-head has to come into play”).
Smith, the daughter of a retired firefighter, is a single mother of three boys and juggles her shift work with the help of her sister. “Somehow we make it work. It can be challenging, but I know my boys are proud of me,” she says.
She will be working on Christmas night this year, having done the Christmas Eve shift last year. “I love my job – I’m not just saying that, I really do. No two days are the same. The public think we’re just a voice at the end of a phone, but they have no idea really of what we do.”
