History of the fire service
Firefighting can be traced back to Roman times when slaves were
given the task of tackling blazes. Known as Familica Publica they
were stationed around the walls and gates of towns and cities.
In the Middle Ages the job became less structured with the
able-bodied people in the community turning out to fight fires with
buckets and other simple firefighting equipment. Water would
be collected from the nearest pond or stream and brought to the
fire by passing buckets along a human chain.
Over time firefighting equipment progressed from buckets to
hand-drawn hand pumps, horse-drawn hand pumps, horse-drawn
steam-powered pumps and finally to the modern pump, powered by a
diesel or petrol engine.
Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, insurance companies
got in on the act and provided their own fire cover for businesses
they had insured. Insured premises were issued with a plaque, known
as a fire mark, to display outside the building which would
indicate in the event of a fire which insurance company would use
its resources to put out the blaze.
However this privatisation of the service meant that it was not
uncommon for more than one brigade to show up at an incident – and
if the fire mark did not belong to those first on the scene, the
building would be left to burn until the relevant brigade
arrived.
This continued until the 19th Century, when towns and cities
(and in some cases, villages) formed their own fire brigades. Each
brigade was very small, and large fires would require several
services to attend.
The inefficiency of this system was exposed during World War Two
when these small brigades found they could not cope with the many
large fires started by enemy bombing. As a result, the individual
brigades were merged into one for the duration of the war, forming
the National Fire Service.
After the war, the provision of fire cover for the local
population became the responsibility of local authorities (such as
city and district councils). For many years firefighting in
our area came under the remit of the County of Avon, and the fire
service was known as Avon Fire Brigade.
The County of Avon was abolished in 1996 and replaced by four
smaller, more localised councils – Bristol City Council, Bath and
North East Somerset District Council, North Somerset District
Council and South Gloucestershire District Council. With Avon Fire
Authority covering an area of the four separate councils, a
combined fire authority was formed to ensure the best interests of
council tax payers in the four areas was represented.
To better reflect the changing role of fire brigades, the Fire
and Rescue Services Act was passed in 2004, leading Avon to change
its name to Avon Fire & Rescue Service (AF&RS).
You can find out all about the present
day AF&RS in About Us