ESAB Introducing...David Hadjicostas MBE - Essex County Fire & Rescue Service

 

Hi David, tell us about yourself
I am 49 years old and have been a fire-fighter in Essex County Fire and Rescue Service for 26 years. Prior to joining the Fire Service I served in the British Army for 7 years and travelled to 5 different continents.

I have been married to Evelyn, from Belfast, for 25 years and we have 4 children, Yannis, Tommy, Melissa (Jack) and Jessica, and a grandson, Jonathon. My family are Greek Cypriots from a small village in what is now Turkish occupied northern Cyprus. Hadjicostas was my great grandfather’s first name. My family name is Xatzinikolas.


What do you do at Essex County Fire and Rescue Service?
I work at the Services HQ at Kelvedon Park. I am the lead manager responsible for Arson Reduction, Fire Investigation, Home Fire Safety and Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults. My duties include the management of our Fire Investigation Team (21 officers), the management of Fire Safety services into peoples homes (7 technicians) and representing the Service on the 3 Local Safeguarding Adults Boards.

I am also an operational response commander so I still get to go out on emergency calls and I am one of the on-call higher level fire investigators. My role has to manage the aftermath of our most serious fire incidents, including death and serious injury. My belief is that the more energy and effort my team and I put into preventive services, the less misery there is for everybody.


What’s your favourite bit of the job?
It’s an old cliché but I still get to do something different every day and because of my operational response commitments I never know what’s going to happen when I am at work.


What is the key safeguarding issue within your organisation currently?
We respond to about 20,000 emergency incidents a year as well as provide up to 7000 Home Fire Safety visits. We come into contact every day with some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, in often difficult and traumatic circumstances, and provide only a small part of all that is needed to help and support people to keep themselves and others safe.

Many of our service users are well known to other services, such as the Police, Health providers, Social care services and others. Through better investigations, better reporting and better management of data and information we have discovered that there are a small group of people, very vulnerable to fire death and serious injury through a combination of immobility, medication, and lifestyle, that can only be successfully targeted and their risks properly managed and mitigated by a combination of services delivered by a combination of organisations. A good example of this is the risk to bed confined adults, using paraffin based emollients to treat pressure ulcers and sores, taking sedatives, who smoke. The solution should not only be about us providing smoke detection, which may only alert someone to a situation they can do little or nothing about.

The key issue for us is being able to identify every single individual within this small group and then manage a number of solutions at the same time through a number of different organisations to keep people as safe as possible in their own homes.


What can we expect you to be doing when you aren’t at work?
When I am not at work I spend as much time as I can with Evelyn and the children. Going to the Park, roller skating, eating out, swimming, holidays at home and abroad, reading, playing, having fun, even watching Star Trek TOS reruns and playing Wii Just Dance !!….. They say that life is what happens while you are waiting for something to happen. Not on my Watch!!


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