Recent fires in Crawley on Saturday (14 March) and Worthing on
Tuesday (17 March) have exposed serious failures to ensure that fire engines in
the County are properly crewed.
When called to a fire at Celandine Close in Crawley, only
one fire engine at Crawley and one at Horsham had sufficient firefighters to
crew them. When they arrived at the incident and requested help it had to come
from Surrey. Two other fire engines at each of these stations were not crewed,
and there were no fire engines crewed at East Grinstead, Haywards Heath or
Turners Hill.
A spokesperson for the West Sussex Fire & Rescue Stop the Cuts group
says, “Details show that if there had been a serious fire in a larger building
in Crawley, those crewing shortages would have resulted in most of the fire
engines coming from Surrey and East Sussex. Having to rely on fire engines from
as far away as Brighton to get just ten fire engines to Crawley is
unprecedented.”
At Worthing a disabled woman had to wait over nine minutes
to be rescued when her home in Clifton Road caught fire, even though the fire
station is only a mile away. One crew each from Worthing, Littlehampton and
Shoreham were sent.
The spokesperson said, “Two of Worthing’s fire engines were at
another incident, but more than one incident at the same time is not unusual.
West Sussex County Council did not properly consider this when planning more
cuts. It is also clear that there were crewing problems, as nearer fire engines
from East Preston and Lancing were not sent”.
Cuts due to take effect in April will see another 5 fire
engines, 21 wholetime firefighters and 15 retained firefighters removed from
fire stations. The County Council has claimed that a new Crewing Optimisation
Group of 16 wholetime firefighters will improve the crewing of retained fire
engines. This has been described as an untested and inadequate attempt to cover
up inadequate resources.
Tony Morris, who has a ‘Stop fire engine and firefighter cuts in West
Sussex petition on the County Council e-petition website, said,
“This new group will not work weekends, so would have been of no use at the
Crawley incident as it was on a Saturday. Many people have seen through the
County Council’s false improvement claims and, as well as over 1,600 signatures
so far on the petition, many councils, organisations, firefighters and members
of the public are strongly objecting to these cuts.”
He concluded, “These failures are just the few that we get
to hear about. The frightening reality is that there are not enough firefighters
to properly protect West Sussex now. These further cuts will put firefighters
and the public at increased risk.”
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