Blidworth: Care home staff praised for fire response

Staff at a care home have been praised for their quick reactions after a "significant" fire broke out.

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service thanked workers at Hatzfeld House in Blidworth for the way they responded to the blaze in February.

Officers said care home staff avoided a more serious incident by evacuating the home after initial attempts to fight the blaze failed.

A police investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing.

Emergency services were called to reports that a fire had broken out in one of the care home's rooms in Mansfield Road on 21 February.

Staff had attempted to tackle the fire using an extinguisher, but it developed into a larger blaze.

The fire service said the workers followed their emergency procedures - calling 999 and evacuating residents to a nearby school.

During the incident, staff used Microsoft Teams to maintain constant communication and used an app developed by the home, which proved to be "invaluable" during the blaze as some evacuation information was too hot to touch from the heat of the fire.

Karen Kirk, fire safety inspector for Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: "We want to praise all the staff at Hatzfeld Care Home who acted quickly, professionally and in line with their well-established fire safety procedures.

"There were many vulnerable people involved and without the professionalism of the care home staff and how seriously fire safety was taken by them, we could have been facing a much more severe incident."

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