Cuts spread over the border and the Shoreham Air Show crash

It is a while since I posted on this blog, but rest assured that campaigning has continued. I will comment more on that in future posts soon, but I first wanted to mention the latest situation in neighbouring Hampshire. I am also aware of some speculation circulating on the West Sussex response to the Shoreham Air Show crash, so I want to try and help clarify the situation.

Hampshire - It seems that the people of Hampshire are also to have their fire service downgraded. Just as in West Sussex their senior officers are rolling out the same sound bites that may sound reassuring to the public, but are at best misleading and at worst dishonest.

Nonsense about ‘the risk has changed’, when houses still catch fire, vehicles still crash and people still need rescuing. ‘The number of fires has reduced’, when that has never been a factor in determining the number of fire appliances and fire fighters required. This is not about how many people and assembly lines you need in a factory to produce ‘x’ products. Fire cover provision has always been based on the need to ensure a speedy response to any location and to allow for major incidents and several calls occurring at the same time.

The biggest obscenity is that they ignore the fact that fire cover standards and adequate crewing levels developed after many deaths of both firefighters and the public. Now, to suit the demands of their masters, senior officers disgrace their uniforms by putting their own careers before public and firefighter safety.

I realise that they have to follow instructions, but why can’t they show the courage and integrity of many of their predecessors and stand up for public safety and stand up for their firefighters? If only they could be honest about the effect of cuts and tell Councillors that longer response times will result in more deaths and more property damage. I know – pigs might fly!

Shoreham Air Show - This crash was truly horrifying and has touched many thousands of people. The friends and families of those involved should be first in all our thoughts. It was a tragic reminder of the vital need for our emergency services and of the challenges they face. There was no lack of courage or integrity shown by the firefighters and other emergency service personnel who responded.

I mentioned speculation about the response, so would like to report what I have been told by several reliable sources. A part-time crew from Worthing was first on scene, as they were on a fire engine parked up near the entrance to the airport. They were not in that location, as suggested in the press, to cover the event, but they had been called in and sent to the Shoreham area to try and cover the lack of crews for fire engines at Lancing, Shoreham and Steyning.

As far as the crash was concerned, it was pure chance that they were in that precise location and were able to be on scene immediately. It was also extremely good fortune that they themselves were not struck by the aircraft. A slightly different trajectory and it could have been a different story. 

Next on scene were the airport's own fire engines, quickly followed by the private fire engines and crews hired in by the organisers especially for the event. West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service do not provide fire engines or firefighters for the event. The only involvement is the provision of an officer to the event control, in line with Air Show event guidelines. I also understand that West Sussex County Council  charge the charity for that officer’s attendance.

West Sussex FRS and East Sussex FRS attended the crash with crews from Hove (2), Brighton (2), Worthing (2), Littlehampton (2, including 1 from standby at Henfield), Selsey (from standby at Storrington) and Bognor Regis, plus special vehicles and personnel from the Technical Rescue Unit.

On this occasion there is nothing to suggest that the lack of crews at several stations in the area, or the longer response times, affected the outcome. Again, that was the result of chance.

I should mention that this information has not come from official sources and I have had to rely on unofficial sources within the service. Since the campaign against the cuts began, WSFRS has made it increasingly difficult to obtain accurate information. They are desperate to keep the truth of often abysmal fire cover, and the real effects of the cuts from the public. 

This was clearly demonstrated when, after I published details from their part-time firefighter availability system, they severely restricted access to it. Previously anyone in WSFRS could access it and concerned personnel had provided details of some of the most appalling levels of fire engine availability. On occasions less than half of fire engines were available.

Of course, if WSFRS was more forthcoming and more honest when it came to the provision of information, speculation would be less likely. They only have themselves to blame. Not only do they fail to provide legitimate information, they also use every excuse they can to refuse to provide it. More on that in future posts.

COUNCIL RISK PASSENGER LIVES AT GATWICK AIRPORT

Press Release circulated yesterday:

The West Sussex Fire & Rescue Stop the Cuts group is concerned that survival chances for passengers and crew, in the event of a crash at Gatwick Airport, have been seriously reduced by County Council cuts to the fire service. A spokesperson said, “Not only have the cuts put 800,000 residents in greater danger, but millions of passengers who use the airport each year will be doubly unlucky if they are in a crash at Gatwick”.

The spokesperson continued, “We all hope we are not involved in an aircraft crash, but there are several around the World every year. When it happens we rely on the emergency services arriving quickly to rescue survivors from the wreckage. Sadly the response from West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service is now slower and smaller than ever, despite aircraft now carrying more people”.

The spokesperson added, “The airport is not responsible, as they have an effective fire service, but for crashes they need significant support from local emergency services. The only criticism of the airport is that, according to the County Council, they raised no objections to the cuts[1]”.

Retired Fire Service Operational Planning Officer Tony Morris said, “Not only do the cuts affect survival chances at the airport, but if a plane comes down beyond their very small response area, the airport’s fire service does not respond. Survivors would then be totally reliant on the hopelessly inadequate local fire service response. Firefighters would do their best, but the odds would be stacked against them”

West Sussex County Council cuts include:

• The two nearest fire engines to the airport could reach the airport in two minutes, but they were removed in the last round of cuts.
• The next nearest fire engines at Crawley have just been cut from three to two.
• Response to the most serious category of emergency has been cut from ten fire engines to just six, despite aircraft now carrying more passengers. Other essential specialist vehicles have also been removed from the automatic response.
• Together with cuts in crew numbers, instead of around 90 firefighters being sent, less than 50 will arrive. Yet they know that at the Kegworth crash in 1989, over 100 hundred firefighters were needed to rescue the 82 injured survivors.
• The Heavy Rescue Tender, with specialist rescue equipment, is no longer sent when emergencies are declared. Gatwick is now the only international airport in Europe not to get a specialist rescue vehicle from their local fire service when aircraft are in trouble.
• Even worse, when an emergency is declared the two fire engines from Crawley are sent, but no firefighters are left to crew the Heavy Rescue Tender. If a crash then occurs another vehicle will have to be sent from 35 miles away.
• Whilst they have stopped sending this rescue vehicle, they do send a high reach aerial appliance, just in case the aircraft is a large Airbus A380. To do that, but not send the rescue vehicle, which would be essential at any crash, makes no sense and indicates that professional judgement is either flawed, or cuts are forcing these dangerous changes.
• Foam supplies have been removed from the nearest station to the airport and now have to be sent from 50 miles away. Last time these were sent to an emergency at the airport they took over an hour and a quarter to arrive.
• Inadequate crewing across West Sussex also means that many of the nearest fire engines and support vehicles are often unavailable. As many as 16 of the nearest 22 fire engines have been without crews on occasions, and response times have increased dramatically.
• At a recent incident in Crawley, cuts and inadequate crew levels showed that the nearest ten fire engines included two from Brighton, nearly 30 miles away. With Gatwick located in the Borough this is a disgraceful level of protection.

Mr Morris concluded, “When early warning is received of an aircraft in serious trouble at Gatwick, the public expect the local fire service to be there with enough resources to give them a good chance of survival. It is shameful that West Sussex County Councillors are failing to ensure that happens.”

West Sussex Fire & Rescue Stop the Cuts

ENDS

Further information

Email:               wsfrsstopcuts@aol.com

Web:                wsfrscuts.blogspot.com 

Facebook:        West Sussex Fire & Rescue Stop the Cuts 

NOTES

1. At all the other airports in the UK that handle the Airbus A380 aircraft, the airport authorities have equipped their own fire service with an aerial appliance. Gatwick rely on the local fire service to send one from Horsham (16 miles away), or from Worthing (35 miles away).

2. The Kegworth Comparison – this crash in 1989 involved 118 passengers, 82 of whom were seriously injured. Their rescue required the airport fire service plus 22 fire engines and over 100 firefighters from local fire services.

The latest aircraft using Gatwick include the Airbus A380, versions of which carry over 550 passengers. Instead of increasing the response to cope with the greater challenge, West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service has quite unprofessionally reduced it to the lowest it has been since the 1950s.

3. Tony Morris responded to the Airports Commission consultation to highlight these problems. A copy of his submission is attached below (Annex 1).

Annex 1

From	Tony Morris tonyacmorris@aol.com
To	airports.consultation airports.consultation@systra.com

Important factor omitted from review of possible second runway at Gatwick Airport 

Dear Mr Davies,

I am writing to you as an individual. I am now retired, but was an Emergency Planning Officer for West Sussex County Council (1999 to 2014) and before that the Operational Planning Officer for West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service (1993 to 1999). In both posts I worked closely with other emergency services and the airport operator on planning for all types of major emergency at Gatwick.

There appears to have been an important omission in the debate regarding a possible second runway at Gatwick Airport. That omission concerns consideration of the ability of hospitals, the emergency services, local authorities etc. to cope with an aircraft accident, or other major incident at the Airport.

I believe this aspect is even more vital than the infrastructure to support the airport. It is becoming increasingly clear that these services are less well able to respond to an incident at Gatwick than previously, primarily as a result of budget cuts. Whilst I am less familiar with their ability at Heathrow, I believe they have significantly more resources close to the airport. In addition, whereas West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service (WSFRS) has removed the two nearest fire engines to Gatwick and intend to remove the third nearest, London Fire Brigade has increased resources in the vicinity of Heathrow. The attached maps illustrate the disparity between the airports with regard to the location of supporting fire stations.

It is quite clear that the ambulance service and hospitals in Sussex are struggling to cope with winter pressures, so their potential to also cope with hundreds of casualties from an air crash must be in serious doubt. Sussex Police have also suffered staffing cuts that affect their ability to deal with major emergencies. The ability of West Sussex County Council's Social Care department to provide support to uninjured survivors and relatives of the injured or deceased is another vital service that has been affected by budget cuts. 

The latest aircraft using Gatwick include the Airbus A380, versions of which carry over 550 passengers. When you consider that the aircraft involved in the Kegworth air crash in 1989 was only carrying 118 passengers, you get an idea of the significantly greater demand on local services if a larger aircraft crashes at Gatwick. At Kegworth 82 people were seriously injured and it took over seven hours to free them all from the wreckage. The local authority fire service needed 22 fire engines and over 100 firefighters at the incident.

It should also be borne in mind that the Civil Aviation Authority say that planning should consider more than one aircraft being involved in an accident, and the surroundings of the Airport should also be taken in to account. With a busy commuter line at the end of the runway, an aircraft collision with a crowded commuter train must also be considered. Casualties could run in to the thousands at Gatwick.

West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service's cuts and crewing difficulties have made the fire and rescue service much less able to cope than in previous years. The well publicised emergency landing at Gatwick Airport at the end of December showed that, instead of resources increasing to cope with increased risk, they have actually been reduced. The time taken to get resources to the airport has increased significantly, as they have to be sent from stations much further away. The proposed 2015-16 cuts will make this even worse.

When aircraft carried fewer passengers, WSFRS were able to get the full response to the airport by sending fire engines from fire stations that were within 13 miles of the airport. At the 29th December 2014 incident, despite having reduced the scale of the response, it had to come from fire stations up to 40 miles from the Airport. A special vehicle carrying foam, that used to be at the nearest fire station to the airport, took an hour and a quarter to arrive in December. A specialist rescue vehicle is no longer sent automatically, because of crewing shortages. If an aircraft does crash, then that rescue vehicle will have to be sent from at least 30 miles away.  With the potential for several hundred trapped and injured casualties, that is just not acceptable.

Please note that the Airport Fire Service depend heavily on support from WSFRS. The Airport Fire Service is only required to provide a full response to crashed aircraft within the airport boundary, and a reduced response to crashed aircraft very near to the airport. Beyond that small area, the survival of casualties is wholly dependent on an increasingly under resourced local authority fire and rescue service.

This situation is unacceptable for one runway, but I appreciate that is beyond your control. However, recommending a second runway at Gatwick would increase capacity and the likelihood of an accident. To do so, whilst aware of the poor state of the local services to respond, would seem most unwise.

I would urge you to properly consider this aspect before deciding on your recommendation regarding Airport expansion.

Yours sincerely,

  

Tony Morris

Proximity of fire stations

Heathrow

Gatwick

Please note that Surrey Fire & Rescue Service are building a fire station at Salfords, for one fire engine, about five miles from the Airport.

---

[1] Report by Executive Director Communities, Public Protection and Chief Fire Officer – “The Service has met with the Gatwick Airport Fire Service Manager, who raised no objections to the proposals". 

The Secrecy Farce Continues

On the 8th January I reported that West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service were concealing information and had refused details to a member of the public. Well he complained and is so disgusted with the reply that he sent it to me. Instead of apologising and providing the information requested, he received a verbose list of excuses, but no information.

To help understand the key points in the letter, I have provided an interpretation below:

What they said	What they meant
“There was a misinterpretation of your initial request”	We don’t want you to know about our poor crewing performance and increased response times.
“The service no longer provides such information as it can prove misleading to the public”	We are worried that the public may understand this information too well and start asking awkward questions.
“It is important to ensure we provide this comprehensive and consistent level of detail and context regarding the information we provide”	We are making the information less comprehensive and consistent in the hope that people will not know that we failed to ensure adequate crewing at their local fire station.
“Our operational resources may be mobilised from any location in the County”	They always have been, but we are struggling to find an excuse for the cover up.
“Such data has been misinterpreted or used out of context, in the public domain”	We don’t like anyone telling the media and the public what is really going on.
“Giving data based upon home station references, may not provide accurate information regarding our mobilising and response standards”	Saying which station the fire engines were sent from may reveal our appalling crewing shortages and longer response times. All set to get worse after the next round of cuts.
“The investigation identified that this level of information to an individual who has some degree of understanding of ‘Emergency Service Operations’, could conceivably be construed as ‘patronising’”	We are happy to patronise people and to insult the public’s intelligence, if it will help cover up our failings.
We will “consider ascertaining the level of detail required by the requestor and their level of knowledge and intended use of this information, before responding”	We are still going to look at ways of withholding the information for as long as possible, even though it is contrary to WSCC policy on being ‘totally transparent’.
“The investigation also determined that such a request for detailed information would be more consistently and comprehensively handled via a ‘freedom of information’ (FOI) request.”	We want to make this as difficult as possible for the media and public to get the information.
If you are unhappy ….. please ask the Customer Relations Team to arrange a Chief Executive’s review, after which the Chief Executive will send a final response to your complaint.	We did not know that West Sussex County Council does not have a Chief Executive, after the post was made redundant a year ago.

Press cover WSFRS secrecy

For those that have not seen this in the Crawley News

It is interesting that the spokesman mentions 'conspiracy theories', as I had not considered there may be an organised conspiracy. I had just thought the changes were poor decision making by one or more people in the service. Now you have to wonder if their actions are more sinister and co-ordinated!

Gatwick Airport – a critical consideration

West Sussex County Council will be debating expansion at Gatwick Airport next week. The content of a letter sent to all County Councillors is shown below:

"There appears to have been an important omission in the debate regarding a possible second runway at Gatwick Airport. That omission concerns consideration of the ability of hospitals, the emergency services, local authorities etc. to cope with an aircraft accident, or other major incident at the Airport.

I believe that the Council should insist on a second runway only being permitted if additional funding is given to those services that have to respond to major incidents at the airport. This is just as important as the infrastructure to support the airport. That funding could come from the airport operator or the Government, but to proceed without it would be reckless. 

It is quite clear that the ambulance service and hospitals are struggling to cope with winter pressures, so their potential to also cope with hundreds of casualties from an air crash must be in serious doubt. The Police have also suffered staffing cuts that affect their ability to deal with major emergencies. The ability of WSCC Social Care to provide support to uninjured survivors and relatives of the injured or deceased is another vital service that has been affected by budget cuts. 

The latest aircraft using Gatwick include the Airbus A380, versions of which carry over 550 passengers, with versions carrying 900 passengers being developed. When you consider that the aircraft involved in the Kegworth air crash in 1989 was only carrying 118 passengers, you get an idea of the significantly greater demand on local services if a larger aircraft crashes at Gatwick. At Kegworth 82 people were seriously injured and it took over seven hours to free them all from the wreckage. The local authority fire service needed 22 fire engines and over 100 firefighters at the incident.

It should also be borne in mind that the Civil Aviation Authority say that planning should consider more than one aircraft being involved in an accident, and the surroundings of the Airport should also be taken in to account. With a busy commuter line at the end of the runway, an aircraft collision with a crowded commuter train must also be considered. Casualties could run in to the thousands.

More specifically for West Sussex County Council, cuts and crewing difficulties have made the fire and rescue service much less able to cope than in previous years. The emergency landing at Gatwick Airport at the end of December showed that, instead of resources increasing to cope with increased risk, they have actually been reduced. The time taken to get resources to the airport has increased significantly, as they have to be sent from stations much further away. The proposed 2015-16 cuts will make this even worse.

When aircraft carried fewer passengers, WSFRS were able to get the full response to the airport by sending fire engines from stations no further away than Horsham. However, at the December incident fewer fire engines had to come from as far away as Bognor Regis, Shoreham and Worthing, with some taking well over an hour to arrive. With the potential for several hundred trapped and injured casualties, that is just not acceptable.

It should also be of concern to Councillors that the pre-planned response has been reduced. A public inquiry would not accept that an emergency service, given notice of a potential crash, did not use the time to assemble sufficient resources to deal with a crash. The current response would have been inadequate for smaller aircraft, so it is wholly inadequate for today’s aircraft.

Please note that the Airport Fire Service depend heavily on support from West Sussex and Surrey Fire & Rescue Services. The Airport Fire Service is only required to provide a full response to crashed aircraft within the airport boundary, and a reduced response to crashed aircraft very near to the airport. They have no responsibility for building fires, chemical incidents, road or rail crashes on or near the airport. They, and the rescue work at an air crash, are a statutory duty of West Sussex County Council.

I would urge you and your colleagues to properly consider this aspect before deciding on your recommendation regarding expansion at the Airport.