Richard Stevens

Members of Stone Town Council were invited to Stone Fire Station last night to hear a presentation on the Staffordshire Safety Plan for 2008/11 and with particular reference to Stone. Unfortunately it would appear that the cold wet evening deterred some councillors from attending so the attendance was embarrassingly small.

However we were given a very full and interesting presentation which I found very reassuring. A couple of years ago, the Fire and Rescue Service issued a consultation document which caused a lot of consternation and alarm. Hidden in the small print was a proposal to downgrade Stone fire station and to have only one fire engine stationed there. I and many others responded to the consultation document and obviously our protests were listened to.

The new Plan provides for the retention of two fire engines at Stone and for a refurbishment of the thirty year old station premises. And we were also given details of a new approach to dealing with non life threatening call outs. New smaller response vehicles with smaller crews will be first on scene thereby retaining normal fire engines on standby. And over the next few years two new stations will be built to position engines and crews nearer to the anticipated demand.

I couldn’t help but think that someone in the Fire and Rescue service had been taking lessons from Roger Thayne, the former Chief of Staffordshire Ambulance service and realised that the same  principles he had introduced to the ambulance service would work equally well in the fire service. I believe Roger’s legacy will be greater than most people realise.

After the talk, it was outside into the wind and rain to watch a demonstration of a casualty being removed from a crashed car. In a very authentic reconstruction of a two vehicle accident, we were able to see some extremely high tech equipment being used to cut in to the car, remove it’s roof and extricate the injured driver. Very impressive.