The fire and rescue services is what you get when you call for help, at least if there’s a fire. Usually you will get police and medical assistance as well, but here I will focus on the fire and rescue services. In Sweden (as it probably is in most countries) there is a law that regulates what the fire and rescue services can, may and shall do. In this law it is also regulated the relation between the fire and rescue services, the police and the medical service.
It should be noted that in Sweden, it is the owner or user of property that have the primary responsibility when an accident or any other type of emergency occurs. Society (in this case the fire and rescue services) only have to provide assistance if and when it is resonable to assume that the owner or user can’t sort ot the situation by themselves.
When assessing if the fire and rescue services should respond, they must consider
– the need for a fast response
– the importance of what is threatened
– costs for the response and also
– other factors that may be of importance.
This sounds more complicated than it is. In real life it is seldom any problem and the fire and rescue services responds to more or less all kinds of incidents and accidents. But sometimes, especially iof the fire and rescue service gets two or more simultaneous calls, then they have to think before they act – who is in the need of help the most?