Concerns for Scotland’s fire service after no high ladder engine available at blaze | Scotland
Concerns have been raised about Scotland’s fire service’s ability to deal with major blazes like the one that completely destroyed a Victorian office block in Glasgow after it emerged that the city’s only fire engine with a high-reach ladder could not be used on Sunday.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service confirmed that although standard city-based fire engines arrived on scene within minutes of the initial 999 call, the nearest high-reach apparatus, which would provide vital additional capacity to fight a major blaze, came from Coatbridge, 18 kilometres, 26 minutes away in light traffic.
The Guardian understands that after cuts across Scotland in 2023 reduced the number of high-reach fire engines from 26 to 16, only one is now based in Glasgow city center Maryhill and the other in the nearby town of Johnstone. On Sunday, there were two other significant fires in the east end of Glasgow and also in Dumfries, and there was a hazmat incident in Edinburgh where the vehicle may have been deployed before the Union Street fire was called out.
Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar challenged First Minister John Swinney on these cuts to FMQs, saying: “We don’t know at the moment what difference the reduction in fire service capacity on Sunday will make.
“We need immediate investigation of any potential impact this may have had on the response so that lessons can be urgently learned.”
Standard fire engines were initially mobilized from three stations in or very close to Glasgow city center (Calton, Cowcaddens and Maryhill), with the earliest arriving five minutes after the first emergency call.
More devices arrived from the city’s outer suburbs of Springburn and Polmadie, and from the town of Bellshill, 10 miles south-east of the city centre.
Following requests for further support, the first high-reach device was mobilized from Coatbridge, 13 miles 26 minutes away in light traffic; other high-reach devices were located in Greenock (25 miles), Kilmarnock (35 miles away), Falkirk (26 miles) and Edinburgh (50 miles).
A high reach vehicle has a moving ladder with a reach of 32 meters, compared to the 13.5 meter fixed point ladder on a regular vehicle. This allows for the rapid application of significant amounts of water from above and provides additional rescue capability and safety for firefighters. However, these vehicles are much more expensive to purchase and maintain.
Colin Brown, board member of the Scottish Fire Brigades Association, told the Guardian: “The reality is that, as an incident commander, if you decide you need additional resources, you will need them urgently and you will be counting the seconds until they arrive.
“Overall, Scotland’s response time has increased by around a minute and a half since 2016, but on Union Street it took six minutes for the first pump to reach the scene, so this is well below average. It is difficult to know at this stage whether previous cuts to reduce the height of resources or deployments to other incidents have had a direct impact… But there is a broader question: when there are 18 devices on a job, what is the geographical spread we cover with fewer resources? These 18 pumps are often waiting to respond within the area of their communities.”
Brown pointed out that when the first minister visited the scene of the fire on Monday, he said: “she was sitting in a meeting with public sector civil servants who were being briefed on proposed public sector pay and workforce cuts that could see a further 2.5% reduction in staffing in the fire and rescue services, the people who worked tirelessly to fight the fire on Union Street and prevent it from getting much worse.”
Sarwar added: “We now know there are fewer firefighters, less firefighting equipment, longer response times and stations closed. Our fire and rescue service has already been facing cuts for years. Sunday’s tragedy should be a wake-up call and cause for pause.”
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was contacted for further intervention.
