Amy is the Head of Community Safety and Engagement within Nottingham Fire and Rescue Service.
Smoking is one of the top risks for fire harms and her team assesses the risks in homes and educates the community around how to be safer in their homes.
When Amy moved into her role, like many, fire risk wasn’t the first smoking-related risk she thought of. She has found the reality of potential consequences from smoking-related fires alarming.
We do go out to people who've just fallen asleep, or perhaps they've had a drink, and their cigarette has dropped onto the sofa. Most cigarettes manufactured in the UK have a break in them, but a cigarette can still burn long enough to go through flame retardant fabric. We go to houses where people have lost their living room because their couch set on fire. Hopefully the smoke alarm has gone off, they have jumped to attention and run out the front door, called the Fire Service. A bad scenario is obviously much worse than that. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to prevent the worst outcomes for people.
Of course, the only way to completely eliminate the danger is to stop smoking. Even if you aren’t ready for a quit attempt, Amy would encourage smokers to still be open to having a conversation with teams like hers, their pharmacist or GP about support to quit and how to minimise the risks in the meantime. This includes making sure smoke alarms are installed, using the right charger for vapes, and where to smoke – outside is always best.
Firefighters’ main job is to put out fires. They see these problems a lot, unfortunately, and they can find conversations about smoking quite challenging - it's not an easy conversation to have with a uniformed officer who's standing in your living room, if it’s your lifetime habit. Sometimes we have a pushback that ‘I'm the only one who's going to be affected by this, I understand the risk, I want to continue with this behavior’. There can be an attitude of ‘It's my body, my decision’. But for fire risk, it's not just you. There's your family, there are the people around you who might be impacted as well. And then there are the public services that have to come in
Sadly, it isn’t uncommon for residents to continue to smoke in dangerous locations at home. The service issues fire-retardant bedding, but these are only effective in reducing risk if used correctly and the lighter or cigarette doesn’t drop onto a nearby carpet or sheet. Emollient creams that some people may need to use increase risks even more.
Interventions around minimising the risk of smoking-related fires obviously cost money - funds that Amy would rather see going towards support to help smokers to quit, improve their health and remove the risk completely.
She knows, however, that quitting can be a big step. Amy talks about the importance of understanding individuals’ circumstances, and making sure people can access all the support they might need in other areas of their life, to set them up for a successful quit attempt.
Family members often just want that person to stop and can't see why they're continuing, but actually there are other things they might benefit from. We are trying to provide that holistic view and then make sure they've had the right referrals.
The Fire Service team has seen real benefits from taking a collaborative approach across services locally, not just signposting to different support services, but in sharing learning and viewpoints.
Having a shared message that we're giving to citizens matters. Helping partners understand how we see each other's risk profiles and each other's concerns is really useful.
How important is it to the Fire Service that smokers give quitting a try?
A smoke free home actually impacts on your children, your grandchildren. Everybody that's coming to visit benefits from you not smoking in the house. Even if you're just waking your kids up in at 11 o'clock at night because you've triggered the smoke alarm because you fell asleep on the sofa smoking a cigarette.
I hope that every officer is having the same conversation with people about actually eliminating the risk first. “Let's stop smoking, and here's the support.”