Firefighters attending flooding incidents lack funding they need

12:00pm Friday 22nd February 2013 in News

FIREFIGHTERS are attending an increased number of flooding incidents but are not being funded for it, members of the Dorset Fire Authority were told.

Chief fire officer Darran Gunter told members that in 2012 his crews attended a total of 226 flooding incidents, compared to 126 in the previous year and 112 in 2010.

He added that they also carried out 51 rescues from water last year compared to just four in 2011.

However, Mr Gunter said that because attending flooding incidents was a non-statutory duty it did not receive any additional funding from government to carry out the work.

Members agreed that the Local Government Association should be lobbied about the issue.

Comments(5)

sparkleeye says...
12:34pm Fri 22 Feb 13

How much of these costs are down to ridiculous H&S legislation form EU?

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Dorset Boy says...
1:50pm Fri 22 Feb 13

Years ago call outs for rescue, be it animals or humans, were known as Special Service Calls and could be charged for at the Chief Fire Officers discretion. Why are these people not being sent the bill for being rescued? Most of these rescues were down to ignoring road closed signs or ignoring safety signs in the case of beach/mud rescues.

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Teddy 1 says...
2:05pm Fri 22 Feb 13

Are they saying then they won't attend flooding incidnets - not sure on the point of the article. Or, is this where the 'increase' in funding they are demanding is going? More transparency please.

Also where are details of the cutbacks being made in the middle management teams to be posted? These are the ones that mr Gunter referred to in one of his media departments articles yesterday?

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Teddy 1 says...
2:05pm Fri 22 Feb 13

Are they saying then they won't attend flooding incidnets - not sure on the point of the article. Or, is this where the 'increase' in funding they are demanding is going? More transparency please.

Also where are details of the cutbacks being made in the middle management teams to be posted? These are the ones that mr Gunter referred to in one of his media departments articles yesterday?

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common cence says...
5:51pm Fri 22 Feb 13

Why do the fire service need to do this ? And also why do we the council tax payers pay for the fire rope rescue teams travelling from weymouth and poole costing thousands upon thousands of pounds , when we have 12 coastguard cliff/ rope rescue teams covering from east of bournemouth to exmouth that is paid for by central goverment , coastguards also get no retainer money and get paid £6.19 per hour that is the minimun wage , compare that to firemen on what ? £20.00 per hour , mr drax needs to look into this and compare the costs and maybe there could be enough savings from the fire budget to pay to keep the coastguard helecopter,,,,,,,,

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