FIRE fighters were called out 60 times in the last 12 months to rescue obese people in North Yorkshire and Humberside.

New figures have revealed North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service spent more than eleven hours at 15 emergencies.

According to Freedom of Information requests, the longest crews spent at one home was an hour and 18 minutes.

Humberside Fire and Rescue Service had the third highest number of rescues in the UK with 45.

And the number of obese people who need to be moved by firefighters is on the rise across the country. There were 944 incidents where people needed help in 2015/16, up a third on the 709 in 2012/13.

Rescuers often used lifting equipment, special slings and sometimes had to remove windows, walls and banisters in people’s homes.

The cases included helping the ambulance service with lifting equipment to remove an “extremely large” patient who had been stuck on the sofa for days and carrying a 40-stone man from the upstairs of a pub.

Dr David Kerrigan, one of the UK’s leading bariatric surgeons, said patients who become that big “are prisoners, not just within their own body but within their own home”.

York Press:

He told the BBC: “The bigger and bigger they get, the less confident they feel about engaging with the outside world.

“They are big users of the internet - so they don’t even go out to shop any more and do a lot of their socialising using social media, and they just become more and more trapped.”

Jon Foster, area manager at North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: “Of the thousands of incidents we attend every year (around 7,000 in 2015/16), bariatric rescues only account for a very small percentage.

“The role of the fire and rescue service is very broad and not just about fighting fires, we attend a variety of incidents including bariatric rescues to assist our ambulance colleagues.”

A spokeswoman for Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust added: “We are well-equipped to support the majority of patients with complex moving and handling needs within our service.

“However we do, on occasion, need to call on support from our emergency service colleagues to ensure our patients can be taken to hospital safely.”