Following a meeting of members of the Fire Brigades Union last night, the crew from Walney issued a statement.
They said: "The proposals which have been put forward to public consultation involving the five fire stations will no doubt have at some point a drastic effect on a resident of Cumbria or one of the 15.5 million tourists who visit our county each year. An essential emergency resource that was once in place will be simply not there.
"A campaign has been launched on social media through Twitter and Facebook to Save Walney Fire Station and with close to 1,500 signatures on an online petition it is gaining in momentum.
"The plan to close Walney Island’s fire station and relocate the Fire Appliance and Crew to Barrow fire station will not bode well for the communities of Walney and Barrow. Whereas the Appliance may move the Crew will still reside on Walney.
"Currently Walney Appliance can be on its way to an incident on Walney or Barrow within 3.5 – 5 minutes of being alerted. Due to this on average the appliance is attending an incident on Walney within 5-6 minutes and 8-10 minutes in Barrow depending on the incident’s location.
"The Walney Fire Appliance has been mobilised to 130 incidents this year so far should the proposal go ahead then the Crew, when alerted, will have to travel from usually their home address on the Island to Barrow Fire Station to collect the Fire Appliance before proceeding to the incident.
"For most of the crew this will triple both the distance and time it will take to be able to collect the Fire Appliance and proceed to the incident. The travel time to Barrow station will be drastically influenced by the amount of traffic. As the people of Barrow and Walney know it can take a considerable amount of time just to get off Jubilee Bridge (provided it's not being raised) and past BAE Systems at certain times of the day.
"As the crew use their own vehicle, observe all road regulations and speed limits they would be stuck in traffic and unable to attend. As demonstrated at the weekend with the incident on Helmsley Drive, a fire with one initial fire appliance in attendance can become a large fire very quickly, the Walney appliance was in attendance in 8 minutes and was instrumental in
assisting the Barrow Appliance in bringing the fire under control. The outcome would have been very different had the crew been traveling to Barrow to collect the fire appliance.
"Since the cuts to the service last year with the relocation of the Enhanced Rescue Pump from Barrow to Ulverston and the closure of Dalton Fire Station, Barrow currently has one full-time fire appliance with a crew of four firefighters.
"On station there is also an On-Call Resilience Appliance which would be removed leaving both Barrow and Walney one less fire station and one less fire appliance. This doesn’t match up with the comments made by Cumbria County Council about it improving the fire cover in the area.
"This will without doubt have an impact on firefighter and public safety. This is big worry for the communities of Walney,Barrow and all concerned."
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