'Firefighters must prepare for any environment'

From a sewer rescue to a plane crash, firefighters must be prepared to tackle any scenario.

"There's a kind of misunderstanding around the firefighter and what you see in films when they go into a burning building, throw the casualty over their shoulder and walk out - that realistically doesn't happen," says South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service group manager Matthew Craig.

The brigade's 600 firefighters responded to 13,638 incidents last year, an average of 37 a day.

Now, they are on the hunt for new training environments to help prepare for whatever the job brings.

Previous training locations have included football grounds, power stations, Doncaster Sheffield Airport and Sheffield's Megatron culvert.

"Our why is to make South Yorkshire safer and stronger, a part of that is to have the best-trained crews that we can possibly have responding to emergencies," says Craig, a veteran of 24 years in the fire service.

"Part of that is putting them in realistic environments to train in."

Late last year a former retirement home in the Rotherham neighbourhood of Herringthorpe was temporarily repurposed as a training centre for aspiring incident commanders.

Empty blocks of flats have also been used for training exercises prior to demolition, says Craig.

"We are looking for anything that can replicate the kind of incidents we may have, to improve the standard of our training and putting the crews in the most realistic learning environments," he adds.

As well as tackling fires, crews are regularly called out to non-fire incidents.

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service attended 80 animal rescues in 2024, according to Freedom of Information data, as well as 48 bariatric rescues - to help obese people - in the first half of the same year.

Firefighters also responded to more than 300 road traffic collisions in 2025, data shows.

For that reason, training "never stops", says Craig.

"Every day is a school day, that's very much the case in the fire service," he adds.