On Ilkley Moor B'aht Fire Engine

We here at FCCL promote Fridays as Fireplan Fridays   

BUT 

We think WYFRS could  do with reviewing their plans 

after an incident on Friday  24th May 2013.  

At 07:56 a 999 call was received by WYFRS reporting an incident at St Pauls Grove in Ilkley  -  a nice leafy suburb - LS29 8JJ  and VERY LOW RISK. 

Now you would have thought with a fire station  not a quarter of a mile away the response time would have been been pretty damn good  BUT Ilkley is a retained fire station  ( a station where staff are on call, ie the station is not full time crewed)  So whatever the incident on Ikleys station ground an additional 5 minutes has to be added to allow the retained fire fighters to down tools and get to the station. As by the RAC route planner the station to St Pauls Grove would only take ONE MINUTE driving normally. Even so a five and a half minute response time would have been good for any incident (even if  you local station is just around the corner).

UNFORTUNATELY 

on Friday there was insufficient retained crew available to send  the engine from Ilkley.  

So WYFRS control mobilised OTLEY and RAWDON

OTLEY is a retained station and was nearest at 6 miles away 

(15 minute ordinary drive) 

Rawdon is full time crewed BUT is 8.5 miles away. 

(24 minutes ordinary drive)

Then things took a turn for the worse - the house fire became a "persons reported" incident  - which means that the number of pumps attending immediately goes to 

THREE. 

This means Silsden another retained station were  called out 

Silsden is a retained station and 7.5 miles away. 

(17 minute ordinary drive) 

By the time OTLEY turned the corner to St Pauls Grove 

13 MINUTES AFTER THE INITIAL CALL 

HAD BEEN MADE......

The neighbours had rescued the  "person reported" via a ladder to the first floor window.  

SO THIS LEADS US TO SEVERAL QUESTIONS 

1. Is it acceptable to have a response time of 13 minutes - even in a Very Low Risk Area 

2. Are WYFRS content with response times so dire that members of the public are forced to rescue other members of the public out of sheer  desperation! 

3. Will at some point somebody DIE because of these delays in response times.  

A neighbour, the home owner or  a fire fighter ? 

Yes we are aware that WYFRS are recruiting for retained fire fighters in Ilkley - BUT it can take up to 2 YEARS to train a  recruit to become a "competent fire fighter"  

Also  we would  like to point out that if Haworth had become involved in the incident, and as their parish council  wishes  becomes a "volunteer" fire service, they would NOT have been allowed to enter the building as volunteers are not allowed to use breathing apparatus.

We have said since we started this blog in  September 2012 that we genuinely believe that Fire Cuts Will Cost Lives -sadly we think this incident should be recorded as a  

VERY NEAR MISS 

(some would say a complete balls up!)

But this serious incident didn't even make it to the public incident log of the WYFRS website !  

What a good job some people believe in openness and transparency in the fire service.