The Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) shares data with partners from its own internal management information system designed to record the fire incidents that are attended by fire crews on a day-to-day basis. These incidents are presented in depersonalised, mapped format at a number of levels of geography as outlined elsewhere in the help section of this website.

In Greater Manchester, information about these fire incidents is captured to confirm to national requirements set out by the government’s Communities and Local Government department. There are several key ways in which the information about fires can be subdivided and classified. The major components of the incidents reports allow a distinction between fires along the following lines:

Primary or Secondary Fire?

A primary fire is any fire where damage to property with an identifiable owner occurs. These incidents, therefore, will involve fires in residential dwellings, non-residential business properties, and vehicles. These fires all carry the code FDR1, where FDR stands for Fire Damage Report.

A secondary fire is any fire where property ownership does not apply. These incidents often relate to rubbish or bin fires, skip fires, to bonfires and to other fires occurring ‘in the open’. Incidents relating to derelict buildings and houses would be classed as secondary fires. These fires all carry the code FDR3, where FDR again stands for Fire Damage Report.

It is always possible to split the GMFRS incident information to consider primary fires against dwellings separately from the commercial building fires, and both of these from vehicle fires. This approach is taken in presenting the data on Singlepoint.

Accidental or Deliberate?

The Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service deal with fire related issues both accidental and deliberate in nature. Whilst it is not possible to make a judgement about a fire’s cause with absolute 100% certainty, it is usually possible for fire crews to make a sound professional judgement based on the evidence and on experience as to whether a fire has been deliberately started. When the fire cause is unknown, this is recorded, and fires with unknown as the cause are grouped with accidental fires. The GMFRS, like other services around the country, tend to adopt strategies that recognise dealing with deliberate fires is about tackling crime, whereas dealing with accidental fires is about wider community safety and often vulnerable people and communities. The vast majority of primary fires in the home or other buildings will be accidental in nature – for example, fires triggered in the kitchen, by gas or electrical fault, or by discarded cigarettes. The majority of vehicle firers are deliberate.By contrast, the vast majority of secondary fires will be deliberately caused (there being little reason otherwise as to why fires should spontaneously occur in the open).

All fire incident information on Singlepoint is split to present figures and trends for accidentally and deliberately caused fires separately.

AS well as distinguishing between incidents along the major lines outlined above, the information on Singlepoint is also designed to allow the following aspects to be distinguished:

Residential dwelling Fires – Occupancy

Accidental dwelling fire incidents are subdivided to distinguish between 4 different scenarios:

i) Single Occupancy – only one household lives at the property
ii) Multiple Occupancy (Same) – the building is composed of several units of the same type (eg a block of flats, a small shopping centre, a collection of industrial units)
iii) Multiple Occupancy (Different) – the building contains several sub-units with different uses such as flats above a shop, or mixed use commercial units containing shops, offices and workshops.
iv) No Occupancy – no one currently resident (but not a derelict property)

Deliberate secondary fires involving rubbish

Deliberate fires in some way related to rubbish (refuse) are subdivided to allow distinctions to be made along the following lines:

i) Deliberate fires involving domestic wheelie bins
ii) Deliberate fires involving commercial / business refuse bins
iii) Deliberate fires involving fixed /street litter bins
iv) Deliberate fires involving refuse /litter in the open

The full list of data available through Singlepoint from the Fire and Rescue Service is as follows. The list shows the data fields the user can pick, matched to a full description of what the data is:

Field Name	Full Description
All Del Dwel Fire	Primary Fire - All deliberate Dwelling
Acc NDwel Fire	Primary Fire - Accidental Non-Dwelling Property
Del Non-Dwel Fire	Primary Fire - Deliberate Non-Dwelling Property Fire
Ac Veh Fire	Primary Fire - Accidental Vehicle
Del Veh Fire	Primary Fire - Deliberate Vehicle
Ac Dwel SingOc Fire	Primary Dwelling Fire - Accidental Single Occupant
Ac Dwel MulOc Same Fire	Primary Dwelling Fire - Accidental Multiple Occupancy (Same)
Ac Dwel MulOc Diff Fire	Primary Dwelling Fire - Accidental Multiple Occupancy (Different)
Ac Dwel UnOc Fire	Primary Dwelling Fire - Accidental Unoccupied
Del Comm Bin Fire	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Commercial Waste Bin
Del Dom Bin Fire	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Domestic Waste Bin
Del Litter Open Fire	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Litter In the Open
Del Litterbin Fire	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Fixed Litterbin
Del Bonfire	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Bonfire
Del Derelict Buil Fire	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Derelict Building
Del Derelict Veh Fire	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Derelict Vehicle
Del Grass Fire Apr05	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Grass/Heath/Moor/Railway
Del Strw/Stub Fire Apr05	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Straw/Stubble
Del Other Apr05	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Other Structures
Del Plygnd Fire Apr05	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Playground Equipment
Del Skip Fire Apr05	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Skip
Del Tree Fire Apr05	Secondary Fire - Deliberate Tree/Fence/Lamp
All Del Sec Fire Apr05	Secondary Fire - All Deliberate Secondary Fires

More information is of course available from the Fire and Rescue Service than is available here. Incident types that are not featured here but available through an analyst with access to GMAC data are:

• Hostilities to Firefighters
• Fire Casualties
• Special Service Emergencies