Ahead of his appearance at The Emergency Services Show, Stockholm fire chief Peter Arnevall spoke to me about Sweden’s approach to the risks they face. We talk about contaminants to find out how it has evolved since he was with us last year and how his service operates in a rapidly changing risk landscape shaped by geopolitics, climate change and evolving working practices.
Greater Stockholm is the largest fire brigade in Scandinavia, with 900 full-time staff, including 600 firefighters, and around 250 volunteers serving 1.6 million people across a complex mix of dense urban areas, rural communities and an extraordinary archipelago. “I think I have 27,000 islands within my area of responsibility,” Peter explains, demonstrating quite how different his landscape is to what we know in the UK.
Geopolitical risk
While day-to-day work still centres on emergencies familiar to UK fire and rescue services, Peter is increasingly preoccupied by so‑called black swan events. He explains:
“What worries me the most at the moment is the black swan scenario. What I mean by that is terrorist attacks, the ongoing deadly violence going on across Europe and oil spills in the Baltic Sea, as the Russian shadow fleet is passing by our shores.”
With the EU’s embargo on Russian oil, poorly maintained “illegal pirate ships”, as Peter describes them, have become a serious hazard in the Baltic. “Those ships are in really bad condition, flying false flags with crews that don’t know what they’re doing.” Although Sweden’s Coast Guard leads at-sea response, responsibility shifts once pollution hits land. “The Coast Guard is in charge of the oil spill as long as it’s on the sea. But as soon as it hits the shoreline, it’s my responsibility.”
For a region with 27,000 islands, the scale of a worst-case spill is sobering. “Imagine the amount of effort it would take to clean all the affected birds, fish, rocks, people, boats?” he asks. Stockholm’s fire service trains and exercises regularly for such scenarios and has invested in additional containers of specialist equipment and floating barriers. Yet, Peter is candid that some of the response would still be improvised: “We figure it out as we go… It’s all depending on weather, what type of oil, is it happening within the archipelago or is it coming from the outside?”
Climate breakdown
As the UK continues to battle with repeated heatwaves, I ask him about how Sweden is dealing wth climate change. “We see a huge impact. It hasn’t rained here for three weeks now. The risk of wildfires are off the charts,” he says. Southern Sweden is battling rising sea levels and depleted groundwater, while ecosystems shift northward. “Forests are shifting. The animals are moving north, which means that the typical Swedish animals like the moose are having a hard time surviving.”
Operationally, that means rethinking equipment and tactics. Stockholm is stockpiling more dual-use assets, particularly high-capacity pumps that can move water both for wildfire suppression and for urban flooding. The brigade is also adapting to use more non-potable water sources, accepting the challenges of saltwater corrosion. “We are making changes in our equipment, our methods and tactics, and trying to stay ahead of the curve,” he explains.
Evolving working practices
At the same time, internal working practices are evolving to reduce firefighters’ long-term health risks, especially from contaminants. Sweden has spent the last 15 years embedding what Peter describes as the healthy worker model, redesigning stations, procedures and culture to minimise carcinogenic exposure. Renovation projects he presented a year ago are now complete. “We’ve done everything to make sure it’s up to date and modern and up to standards. We keep on going in the same path we’re doing.”
Peter spoke about this work when he joined us on stage at The Emergency Services Show last year. I asked him how much had changed in the last 12 months and he says it is firmly embedded. He explains: “The mindset within the workforce is set, so it’s within our culture now. The firefighters decontaminate on scene as a matter of course; they are really taking care of themselves.”
The results are striking as he shares the work of academics looking at their activity. “We had a scientist doing a study on all the available data, and he could actually see that the Swedish firefighters, as of now, have the same risk or probability of getting cancer as the standard population.” Given that firefighters tend to be fitter and healthier than average, Peter believes the risk should ideally be even lower, but he is clear: “We’re doing something right.”
All this is happening while fire incidents are declining; Greater Stockholm now responds to around 11,000 call-outs a year, down from 12,000 seven years ago, even as the population grows. “The Swedish society is getting safer and safer and safer,” Peter notes. “The problem is that the probability for these really big events is going the other way… Whether or not we’re talking about the risk of war, climate change, flooding, rain, storms, snow, terrorist attacks, ongoing deadly violence, school shootings, the risk of those types of incidents are going up, but we can’t see it in the statistics.”
That shift demands more training and more system-level resilience, not just a stronger fire service. “A resilient society depends on more than just a resilient fire and rescue service,” he concludes. And that, it seems, will require resource and political will to make any long term changes stick.
Four days after speaking to me, Peter’s role changes as he moves away from the fire department to become Sweden’s Director of Rescue Services and Civil Protection at the Swedish Civil Defence Agency. It’s a big job but he’s certainly the one to do it, despite his protestations to me that he’s just a boy from the north of Sweden.
You can hear Peter speak twice at the show on 16 September. He will be in stage with London Fire Brigade’s’ ACC Pat Goulbourne to wrap up the Protecting the Protectors programme. Earlier in the day he will be part of our new Resilience360 offering as we explore the wider world of resilience beyond the emergency services. Register for your free ticket here.