Avon Fire and Rescue Service
fire and rescue service in the west of England
Avon Fire & Rescue Service (AF&RS) is the fire and rescue service covering the unitary authorities of Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire in South West England.
The headquarters of the service is co-located with Avon and Somerset Police in Portishead. It has 21 fire stations and 34 fire engines across its area, which covers 515 square miles (1,330 km2) with a population of 1.9 million.
History
Avon Fire Brigade was created in 1974, when the county of Avon was created. In 1996, the county was abolished and four separate unitary authorities were created. Administration of the service was taken over by a joint fire authority made up of councillors from the four unitary authorities. In 2004, the Fire and Rescue Services Act was passed. To better reflect the changing roles and responsibilities of the fire service, Avon Fire Brigade changed its name to Avon Fire & Rescue Service.
Fleur Lombard (1974 – 4 February 1996) was the first female firefighter to die on duty in peacetime Britain, while Avon Fire and Rescue Service were fighting a supermarket fire in Staple Hill. The Fleur Lombard Bursary Fund provides travel grants so that a junior member of any UK fire and rescue service may visit the fire service of another country.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Avon Fire and Rescue Service” as fire and rescue service in the west of England. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as fire and rescue service in the west of England. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4829193. VIAF identifies the subject as 158541445. The Library of Congress control number is nb2010023703. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1996 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Avon Fire and Rescue Service” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.