Six morbidly obese people are rescued by the fire service every day, startling data reveals.
Laying bare the dire reality of the UK’s obesity crisis, shock figures show firefighters attended 2,194 ‘bariatric assist’ incidents last year.
This is five times higher than a decade ago, reflecting how the nation’s waistline has bulged massively.
Rescue teams have had to winch patients too fat to move out of their flats. Sometimes walls, windows and banisters must be removed to get them out.
Tam Fry, chair of the National Obesity Forum, told MailOnline: ‘Tragically, someone will die in a fire because a crew is tied up on someone else’s rescue.
‘It’s an inescapable fact that fire crews will have to be relied on for these assists for many years to come since the NHS is in no position to offer them.’
He added: ‘Even when the government decides finally to tackle obesity, thousands more will still need winching from their homes on lifesaving missions.’
Ambulance teams typically call out fire crews if patients in need of help are trapped by their bulk.
These will typically be in emergency or health-related situations.
Any instance where firefighters assist because of a patient’s weight is counted in the data, regardless of how they do so.
In October 2020, Britain’s then-fattest man Jason Holton had to be lifted from his third-floor flat by a crane in a seven-hour operation involving 30 firefighters.
The 47st man, of Camberley, Surrey, lived on doner meat, chips and chicken chow mein washed down with 1.5litres of orange juice and five cans of Diet Coke.
Housebound Mr Holton died aged 33 this May.
The bariatric assist figures, collected by the Home Office, show call-outs were at an all-time high in 2022/23 (2,342).
Despite the slight decrease in 2023/24, it was still the second worst year on record.
Just 429 incidents were logged in 2012/13.
A spokesperson for the National Fire Chiefs Council said: ‘There’s a long-standing commitment for fire and rescue services to work with other emergency services, such as the police and ambulance services, to provide public support where we can be of benefit, including with the rescue of vulnerable people.
‘The need for the support of fire and rescue services across a whole range of rescue incidents is going up, and helping bariatric casualties are just one element of that and it’s right that we are helping vulnerable people.
‘Our firefighters are well-trained, well-equipped, and completely committed to working professionally and collaboratively with blue light partners as forms part of our statutory role.’
Firefighters spent more than 20,000 hours rescuing severely obese people in total – with some individual incidents lasting up to four hours.
Britain’s fattest man Jason Holton was housebound for eight years and died in May 2024
Britain’s fattest man James Holton had to be hoisted out of his third-floor flat by a crane and by 30 firemen in a seven-hour operation in October 2020
MailOnline analysis suggests the efforts cost around £330,000 in wages, with their average hourly wage of around £16.50.
This estimate only reflects wages paid to firefighters, ignoring additional costs such as transport.
One incident in Durham required the attendance of 30-plus firefighters and over ten fire engines to free a morbidly obese person.
Across England, 888 ‘bariatric assists’ took over an hour to deal with in 2023/24 and 544 required skills of at least ten firefighters.
More than a quarter of adults (26.2 per cent) in England are obese – the highest ratio on record, according to the latest Government figures.
Just shy of two-thirds of all adults in England are overweight or obese, a figure that is also the highest it has ever been.
According to the World Obesity Forum, this figure is set to rise to eight in ten by 2060.
