From today Londoners will be able to keep track of fires and other emergencies in their area through an online fire map of the capital, says London Fire Brigade.  

The map, which goes live on the brigade's new Facebook page on May 24, shows people how many fires, traffic accidents and other incidents firefighters have been called to in their area in the last year. The map is the UK's first fire map and is based on the crime map launched by the Metropolitan Police two years ago.    

People can type in their postcode to see figures for incidents in their area and whether it is more likely than other parts of the capital to have fires, arson attacks or hoax calls. Boroughs and wards are also colour coded according to whether they are above of below average. The brigade hopes that the map will encourage residents, businesses and councils in places with a higher number of incidents to take action to make their area safer. 

Chairman of London Fire Authority's Community Safety Committee, Cllr Susan Hall said: "London's firefighters have done an excellent job of making the capital safer in recent years but there are still some areas that are having too many fires.  

"The map shows that fires happen each and every day across London - what better incentive could there be for people to make sure it doesn't happen to them?" 

To prevent a home fire disaster, the brigade recommends people fit a working smoke alarm on each level of their home and test it weekly. Over half of the people who die in fires do not have working smoke alarms.  


About the fire map 

The areas showing as red on the map have a higher than average number of incidents.  

The map shows that: 

  • On average our firefighters attend 3,734 incidents each month per borough, of these, 417 are serious fires, 1,304 are automatic fire alarms and 279 involve people being trapped in lifts.  
  • Westminsteris our busiest borough - in the past year Westminster firefighters attended 9,024 incidents.  
  • The City of London is the borough with the lowest number of incidents attended in the past year (1,369 incidents) 

The high risk areas in terms of primary, or serious, fires are: Croydon (638 serious fires in the last year), Southwark (617) and Westminster (606).  

The high risk areas for arson are: Croydon (204 large deliberate fires in the last year), Hillingdon (187) and Bromley (186). 

The high risk areas for people getting shut in lifts are: Southwark (1005 incidents in the last year), Tower Hamlets (985) and Westminster (829). 

 

Posted: 16.07pm, 23.05.11