Posted on 22nd Apr
Staff from the six Fire and Rescue services across the East Midlands, including both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, will be joining East Midlands Ambulance (EMAS) to start training to support the response to Covid-19.
Members of the fire service will be working alongside EMAS Urgent Care teams, and could carry out support tasks such as driving Urgent Care vehicles and the safe moving and handling of patients.
Around a dozen fire service colleagues have been requested from each fire service, as well as control room staff and members of logistics teams. All those joining will have volunteered to support EMAS.
EMAS chief executive Richard Henderson and others are working closely with the chief fire officers, and it is anticipated that many of the fire service staff supporting EMAS with COVID-19 will be on-call firefighters.
Richard said: “We have always worked closely with our fire and rescue service colleagues at the many multi-agency incidents we attend.
“We already work closely with fire co-responder schemes across the region and have done for many years.
“During these unprecedented times, we are more grateful than ever for the support of our blue light colleagues for offering to step in to support our staff and our patients.”
Derbyshire’s Chief Fire Officer, Gavin Tomlinson, said: “Over 162 members of staff came forward to volunteer to support EMAS and six of those have already undertaken their training and they are now ready, willing and able to assist driving urgent care vehicles should they be required. A further six volunteers are set to start their training in the coming week.”
A two-day EMAS familiarisation training course has been created and the cohorts will be taught in small groups of six to allow for social distancing. The training will include at the Hazardous Area Response Team centre in Mansfield.
