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More than 1,500 people have signed a petition calling for plans to shut Walney fire station to be abandoned.
Under the plan, the engine based at Mill Lane would be transferred to Barrow, leaving the island, which is home to 11,000 residents, without an appliance based there.
Crew manager at Walney fire station and FBU chairman, Simon Morgan, said the team feared that their jobs may be at risk. 
Walney Fire Station
He said: “Everyone is pretty much devastated. We all live on Walney, Walney is our community, but they are on about taking the fire station off Walney and moving the appliance and the crew over to Barrow; but we’re all going to still live on Walney.
“There is no guarantee that we will fulfill our contracts at Barrow and if they recruit people from Barrow, we’ve not been given a guarantee that we won’t be replaced by them. We are just feeling let down and annoyed.”
Only last month the crew tackled a blaze at Mill Lane Pond in Walney after the beauty spot was set on fire.
From January 1 2015 to October 20 this year Walney has had 123 emergency calls, making it one of the busiest on-call stations in the county.
Walney firefighters were called out 18 times just last month.
Cumbria County Council’s cabinet member for fire and rescue services, Councillor Barry Doughty, will be spending Bonfire Night at the North West call centre in Warrington to monitor fires across the region.
Cllr Doughty said: “In the future we will always have a fire engine available. That’s the idea of putting it into Barrow, so that will be on call the same as any other fire station, and we will deal with it in the normal professional manner that the fire service always do.
“Building up to Bonfire Night the fire service, through its preventable measures, will be informing the public as much as possible to help people to make sure that they make their event as safe as possible.
“We should meet our targets on all of them but clearly Bonfire Night is always a difficult period.”
Closing Walney station would save £60,000 from Cumbria County Council’s budget, but the suggestion has been met with a furious backlash, with residents saying it would put lives at risk and rely on firefighters travelling from longer distances to emergencies.
Tony Frankowski Walney resident Tony Frankowski, of Eamont Close, Walney, has signed the petition to save the station.
He said: “We have had many recent cases of arson on Walney. If somebody wants to be a fool on Bonfire Night, whether it be a dustbin or somebody’s letter box, it’s going to cost lives.
“As a pensioner we are all vulnerable where we live, if anything goes wrong the fire brigade are not going to get to us in time. They are going to put hundreds of lives at risk, but it’s the elderly that could suffer because a lot of us live on our own. There will be a lot of people in potential danger.
“We already had a lot of fireworks going off in the lead-up to Halloween.
“I’ve signed the petition and I’m dead against it, you cannot put a price on life.”
Walney fire crew are urging as many people as possible to get involved with their campaign.
Mr Morgan said: “The crew are overwhelmed by the amount of public support they are receiving and, despite having the proposal hanging over them, are continuing their firefighting role as part of the Walney community with utmost professionalism.”
People can sign their petition at
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