Cornwall firefighters win national Heavy Rescue Challenge

Lifting a lorry clear of a crushed car to reach someone trapped inside is not a skill you get many chances to practise. Five firefighters from Cornwall found themselves facing exactly that scenario earlier this month, working alongside a crew they had never met before, and it earned them a national title.

Cornwall’s team at the Festival of Rescue

Five firefighters from Cornwall Fire & Rescue Service travelled to the University of Essex to take part in the UK Rescue Organisation’s Festival of Rescue, an annual event that brings fire and rescue services from across the country together to develop skills, share best practice and test crews against realistic rescue scenarios.

Alongside the competitive element, the festival gave firefighters access to specialist workshops covering some of the newest developments affecting rescue work on UK roads. This year’s Cornwall team worked through sessions on Waymo self-driving vehicles, powered heavy goods vehicles, and techniques for safely managing road traffic collisions involving HGVs.

They then moved on to the competitive scenarios themselves, completing two vehicle extrication challenges, two trauma scenarios and the Heavy Rescue Challenge.

Cornwall and Oxfordshire join forces

For the Heavy Rescue Challenge, Cornwall’s crew teamed up with colleagues from Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service, a combination the two crews had not worked as one team before. Together they faced a complex scenario requiring them to lift a lorry off a car to safely release a trapped casualty, and the combined crew finished first.

A spokesperson for the Cornwall FRS Extrication Team said: “With limited opportunities to train specifically for the Heavy Rescue Challenge, some last-minute changes to the team, and then joining forces with a crew we’d never worked alongside before, coming away with first place makes this one pretty special.

“A massive thank you to Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service. It was an absolute pleasure and privilege to compete alongside them.

“It just goes to show that borders, and apparently accents, don’t matter. Put firefighters together with a common goal and there’s an incredible ability to communicate, adapt, work as one team and get the job done.”

Bringing national learning back to Cornwall

The Cornwall FRS Extrication Team was established in 2001, and for more than two decades has used specialist rescue events and competitions like this one to build knowledge and experience that gets brought back into the service. That learning is shared through the training function, and can also feed into how rescue equipment and operational capability are developed.

As the vehicles on Cornwall’s roads keep changing, events such as the Festival of Rescue give firefighters a chance to work with emerging technology, exchange knowledge with crews from other services and develop techniques that can ultimately be applied at real incidents. The team will now prepare a debrief report examining the outcomes and learning from this year’s festival, so the knowledge can be shared within the service.

The team added: “We would like to thank Cornwall Fire & Rescue Service for its continued support in enabling us to attend these events and bring the learning and experience back into the service.

“Winning is a fantastic achievement, but the real value is what we learn and what we can bring home. We will now prepare a full debrief on this year’s event and look at how that learning can be shared to further improve our response and help make Cornwall’s roads safer.”