About Us
Blake Emergency Services is an independent UK based and privately owned business with global presence and reach.
About Us
Blake Emergency Services is an independent UK based and privately owned business with global presence and reach.
As a family owned business we have that extra commitment and passion in our field – we are industry leaders, highly trusted, and respected by major insurance companies, air operators and many other global entities alike.
Our unparalleled expertise, reputation and professionalism provide an excellent service no matter the size of the incident or event. We are committed to continual improvement and professional development of our team – ensuring the best support wherever and whenever you need it.
With Blake Emergency Services our clients can rely on us as their trusted partner providing an effective, professional, sensitive, discreet and confidential emergency response service. We work alongside our friends and trusted alliance partners Angel Emergency Services, based in China and Fireside Partners, based in the United States to provide that extra level of support to clients and families at the time of need.
Why choose
Blake Emergency Services?
There are many reasons why Blake Emergency Services is the perfect partner for your Emergency Preparedness – many of our clients can vouch for us – but logistically:
- Our UK Head Office is based in Cheshire, less than half an hour’s journey from Manchester International Airport.
- Our UK Operations Centre is located in Watford, close to London Heathrow Airport.
- We have Regional Directors and deployment equipment based in North America, Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand.
- Team members in 40 different countries.
- Our close proximity to major international airports and our global presence ensures we are able to deploy equipment and personnel speedily and efficiently.
Our real-world experience, extensive disaster management expertise, high levels of empathy, professionalism and discretion provides you with unparalleled Disaster Management services and support.
As industry leaders in our field, we are proud to be the chosen emergency response provider for many of the world’s leading airlines.
What our clients have to say
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Our Team
Committed to exceeding
client expectations.
Blake Emergency Operating Structure
Client confidentiality and privacy are our cornerstones – we will never break your trust by citing details of your business preparedness.
We believe that all clients are individual and can customise our services to suit your individual needs. Our commitment is to supporting you in the event of a crisis, traumatic event or disaster in the most sensitive, effective, efficient, and professional manner possible.
Blake Emergency Services Management Team
Abigail Pollard
Managing Director
Leaving a successful career as CFO in the technology sector, Abigail joined Blake Emergency Services in 2005. Since joining, she has been involved in the response to over 30 aircraft incidents across 20 countries around the world of varying size and complexity, as well as more recently in the response to cyber-attacks.
After gaining hands-on response experience to major incidents occurring in countries such as Nigeria, Brazil, Lebanon, Cuba and Cameroon (to name a few), across a range of emergency response disciplines, Abigail took the role of Incident Director in the response to the tragic loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Here, she was responsible for managing deployment teams in both the Ukraine and Holland, as well as providing the key interface with the client, insurers and lawyers throughout the response.
Since then, Abigail has performed the role of Incident Director following major aviation losses in Columbia, the UK, Ethiopia, Iran and Pakistan, as well as acted in an advisory capacity on other recent losses. The work on these incidents and others by Abigail and the broad Team of response professionals at Blake Emergency Services has gained recognition for the business with key experts across the globe based on our professionalism, commitment, transparency, and cost effectiveness.
When not involved in incident response, Abigail advises Clients on their response capability, works with various entities to ensure that the company is well placed to assist Clients with their emergency response preparedness and in the event of an incident to ensure a more cohesive response where possible for the benefit of the client and their clients.
As well as attending key industry events across the globe, training courses and forums, Abigail has spoken at many leading industry events throughout the world, including IATA forums, international insurance conferences, and crisis communications summits to highlight what can be involved in the response to an aviation loss and how the different entities involved can support and assist those affected by the incident based on Blake’s extensive emergency response experience.
In common with all at Blake Emergency Services, her goal is to make sure that those affected by the tragic circumstances surrounding an incident are handled sympathetically, efficiently and effectively.
Chris Williams
Director of Training and Resilience
Chris initially joined Blake Emergency Services in 2004 as a member of their International Response Team, before becoming a full-time member of staff in 2016 as their Business Continuity and Emergency Response Specialist.
Chris brought with him extensive knowledge in Airline Operations, Business Continuity and Emergency Planning, Operational Security and Dangerous Goods. He has also completed the Air Accident Investigation Course at the Internationally renowned Cranfield University in the UK.
Further, having held several senior positions in the UK National Health Service, Chris has in-depth knowledge of Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Planning for the Health Sector and all of the challenges that presents. While with the NHS, Chris was also involved with Emergency Planning for the 2012 Olympics in the UK. Following the Paris Terrorist attacks in November 2015, he was involved with the UK Police in drawing up NHS response plans for a similar event in the UK. While working with the NHS Chris qualified with the British Standards Institute as an ISO22301 Business Continuity Practitioner.
In January 2017 Chris was promoted to the role of Director of Training and Resilience and he now leads on all aspects of training. He has been deployed to support the response to a number of aircraft accidents.
Chris is qualified and has been approved by the UK Civil Aviation Authority as a trainer. He is a UK DfT / CAA qualified Aviation Security Instructor and Threat Assessor.
Chris is passionate about working with clients to develop and enhance their organisation resilience and emergency preparedness, and of course, responding incidents and accidents.
Christopher Statham
Director of International Operations
During his time in the RAF, Chris was deeply involved in contingency planning and response. As Incident Commander, he ran the RAF field team response to a Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland with a loss of 27 lives and for a C130 transport aircraft crash in Blairgowrie, also in Scotland in which the crew of 9 died.
Having left the RAF Chris became Managing Director of a Disaster Victim Identification company where he orchestrated and supervised in theatre the response to incidents in Indonesia, South Africa, and Italy. He also supervised the simultaneous deployment of response teams to the Isle of Man and the Ivory Coast.
In 2000, Chris joined Blake Emergency Services where he has been heavily involved in writing Emergency Response Procedures, Training, and Marketing. He deployed to Colombo following the tsunami and set up Body Storage Units at the request of the UK Foreign Office, working alongside the Metropolitan Police and other European DVI teams. Other deployments include Nigeria following an aircraft crash where he set up mortuary facilities, property, body recovery and identification teams and family support teams. In the more recent deployments MH17 and PS752 he was working with UK FCO and other National Embassies.
Chris has lectured to organisations throughout the UK and Europe on disaster victim identification and incident management, including the University of Herefordshire MSc Course in Emergency Management, UCL, the Metropolitan Police Training Academy at Hendon and at Cranfield University.
He has also organised many Temporary Mortuary Training Days in the UK and run training courses for police and the aviation industry and has taken part in Radio and Television programmes on many issues affecting mass disasters. Chris has also had articles published on the strategic response to handling mass disaster. He is a qualified bomb threat assessor.
Our Vision
and Values
Our Mission Statement
To be recognised by those we work with as the world’s leading Emergency Response service provider through the delivery of effective, honest and appropriate emergency response consultancy; informative, engaging and effective training; and caring, intuitive and professional emergency response. We will achieve this through our continuous positive actions.
Our Core Values
Recognised across the industry as being professional, appropriate and empathetic. We are committed to delivering high quality emergency management consultancy, training, and incident response.
We achieve this through consistently listening, anticipating our clients’ needs, staying up to date with international legislation and best practice, sharing our incident response experiences, and delivering services and training which continue to evolve to meet our clients ever changing needs.
All of our services are delivered in line with our ISO9001:2015 Quality Management certification.
Providing a high standard of customer care is foremost in all our actions, through our client consultancy relationship, training and permanent readiness to activate. We understand that forming strong relationships is integral to establishing trust and cohesion. Experience shows us that this is especially important in the event of a major incident, wherever in the world we find ourselves working.
We support our clients in their daily emergency response preparatory activities. Having established relationships with our clients means that they are comfortable getting in touch with us, no matter how big or small the incident. Robust relationships enable effective deployment and management of operations.
We will work with integrity and discretion in all that we do. This is not negotiable. This is the foundation on which we work and uphold alongside respect and transparency.
Integrity is never more important than when we are working on a response with our client to support those affected by the emergency and their families and friends. Whether this be in a Family Assistance Centre, the mortuary or in the emergency call centre we will do our utmost to protect and support those we are working with.
We will be open and honest with our clients in all our interactions with them. Our intention is to always be transparent and to highlight only what we believe a client needs based on our extensive international response experience and where they are in their strategic emergency response journey.
We value that our clients are all at different points in their preparedness journey, and each client is different.
With our clients we continue to work and learn together by recognising the value in listening to their challenges so we can improve our services and relationships. It is important to us that our client feels heard and feels valued as part of the Blake family.
Just like our clients, our Team Members are our family and they make us who we are. We encourage all our team members to make suggestions to improve all aspects of our services and business processes, both internally and externally facing, so that we continually improve how we support our clients and those affected by an emergency situation.
Our aim is to help people.
Whether this be through supporting our clients in their preparedness journey; working with and supporting those affected by an emergency directly or indirectly; or sharing our company’s extensive incident response experiences in appropriate forums around the world.
We endeavour to continually develop knowledge and skills to support people in a world where the evolving nature of emergencies can affect how we view and practice Emergency Response Management.
We continually strive to overcome global barriers by recruiting individuals with diverse backgrounds, skills, cultures, beliefs, and language abilities. We recruit team members who are caring, people-focused and professional, and will support them with appropriate training and systems to ensure that they feel valued and experience personal growth.
For us, people are not our resource, they are our resilience.
Looking for Emergency Response Planning and Consultancy?
Following an emergency event it is vital that the organisation is able to learn from the event, we are here to help.
