Moving to Beaconsfield Fire Station - the boat and its towing vehicle.

3 December 2009

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service is pumping £120,000 into strengthening its water rescue service.

The main changes will see all firefighters receiving additional specialist training, and the relocation of a fire boat from Marlow Fire Station to Beaconsfield Fire Station. The boat at Newport Pagnell Fire Station will remain unchanged.

The organisation carried out a review of its response to water-related incidents following the summer 2007 floods and the publication of an independent national review carried out for the government.

Assistant Chief Fire Officer Darryl Keen said: “Although there is no statutory duty requiring fire and rescue services to attend water incidents, there is a clear public expectation that we will do so, and it is obviously in keeping with the wide range of other work that we do to save lives and make people safer.

“Our review set out to strengthen our resilience to flood rescue incidents, while continuing to ensure that the safety of staff was not compromised.

“It concluded that enhanced training and equipment would provide a safer system of work at the majority of water-related incidents that we attend, as well as substantially increasing the number of firefighters able to undertake this work.

“The decision to relocate the fire boat from Marlow to Beaconsfield was taken because of the huge time commitment involved in keeping water rescue crews in the south of the county fully qualified and fully available.

“Marlow is staffed by firefighters who live locally and are on call to serve their community by being alerted to come in from home or their place of work. Beaconsfield is a permanently crewed station which offers far more flexibility in terms of training time.

“Our firefighters at Marlow are to be congratulated for the way they have crewed the fire boat since it was introduced in 1988, particularly when you consider the relatively small number of qualified staff available to run it.”

Crews at Beaconsfield have been training locally and in North Wales to enable them to conduct safe, effective and efficient water rescues. The transfer of the boat will take place tomorrow (4 December) at 6pm.

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service has attended more than 100 water rescue incidents in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes over the past eight years, and has supported other brigades at incidents further afield.