Fire chief calls for coordinated flooding response
Many rescue operations were required in the recent flooding
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Friday, 29, Jun 2007 10:33
One of Britain's top firefighters has called for a coordinated single body to tackle incidents of flooding in the future.
England and Wales have been hit with heavy rain over the last few days and at least five people have lost their lives in the resultant flooding.
And with more bad weather predicted for this weekend the emergency services remain on alert to deal with further incidents.
Following this week's floods, the Chief Fire Officers' Association is calling for better co-ordination in the way major flooding incidents are handled.
CFOA spokesman Paul Hayden, the chief fire officer for Hereford and Worcester, said his organisation had last November identified that "many different agencies" were involved in both major and minor flooding and in inland water incidents.
"Frankly at the sharp end my firefighters or members of the public are less interested in which government department is responsible, but more that someone comes and does something about it," he told the Today programme.
"We [could] separate off the management of the floods themselves which is a much more broad issue, but from the fire and rescue perspective we're suggesting that the rescue effort needs to be better coordinated with a single body in charge."
And he confirmed that the fire and rescue services did not in fact have any official duties in relation to floods.
"[We have] absolutely none whatsoever and I think we've managed for many, many years in the fire service where we don't have a statutory duty to do all of the things that we do, but we have a general duty to protect the public," he said.
"We took over 300 calls in less than an hour the week before last, and to have said to those people well actually we don't do floods, that's another government department, would have been silly and of course that would never happen."
He pointed out that recommendations had been made after the floods in Boscastle and Carlisle and he said research work carried out by the CFOA had prompted a major government exercise, Exercise Trident, back in 2004.
"Sadly when you look at all the major events both here and in Europe and in the United States the same recommendations come out time and again," he said.
Nevertheless he did believe "tremendous progress" had been made since the CFOA report in November.
The Met Office has put out weather warnings for the coming weekend raising fears of further flooding in South Yorkshire and the Midlands.