‘We would have been lost under new budget regime’

BOMB blast fire fighters who helped stretcher wounded victims from the wreckage of Thursday’s terrorist explosions are facing deep cuts to their rescue squads.
Union officials have been forced to make a desperate appeal to government in a bid to stop Camden’s heroic team of fire fighters being split up and moved to stations in the suburbs.
The red alert came as New Journal reporters uncovered details of how the fire service was hampered by incorrect information and crossed wires as they bravely tried to get first aid to blast victims and help dazed passengers out of underground danger zones.
Worried ground-level fire officers warned last night (Wednesday) that plans to cut manpower and resources at Euston Fire Station by moving pumps to bases in outer London will prove catastrophic if Camden is faced with a similar disaster. Fire Brigade bosses insist that there is nothing wrong with the proposed shake-up and say they will press ahead with the cuts at Euston later this year in order to improve response times in the suburbs.
But they are under mounting pressure to change their minds.
Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson this week rallied behind union campaigners and the fire fighters who battling the cuts on the ground.
He put Prime Minister Tony Blair on the spot during a parliamentary exchange on Monday.
Mr Dobson asked: “I, on behalf of my constituents, raise a deeply felt concern of local people, firefighters and others in the emergency services about the future security around the King’s Cross and St Pancras area. The London fire authority has been planning for some time to withdraw some fire engines from three local fire stations – Euston, Clerkenwell and Islington. Thursday clearly demonstrated that they do relate directly to today’s risks.”
Fire crews in the south of Camden have been told to cut out any non-urgent jobs such as training drills, meetings and cat-stuck-in-tree incidents to cover a raft of alerts over suspect packages.
Teams across London have dealt with more than 40 warnings in the past three days. Mr Blair, however, gave no concrete pledge to Mr Dobson, simply telling the MP that he would look into the matter.
A fire union source, who asked not to be named after Brigade chiefs ordered a complete ban on talking to the press, said: “If the cuts had already been in placed, we would have been lost on Thursday. We would have been really stuck even though the station is right in the thick of it.”
With the clock ticking for fire unions to secure a change of heart, senior Labour councillors are also refusing to back their campaign.
The ruling Labour group has not changed its position from comments made earlier this year when community safety chief Councillor Anna Stewart sent union officials packing from a full council meeting without Town Hall support.
Camden leader Councillor Dame Jane Roberts said: “What happened is of a wholly different order, it has no bearing on what was being said.”
A well-placed and trusted source candidly told the New Journal of the difficulties they faced on Thursday..
He told how Euston officers were twice mistakenly called out to Euston Square Underground and were later forced to provide desperate help by grabbing a first aid kit from the station’s kitchen.
Even though Euston Station was nearest to the bomb blasts in King’s Cross and Bloomsbury, as well as Aldgate, the confusion meant crews in faraway Lewisham, south London, and Homerton, east London, received the first official alerts.
The firefighter said: “We we’re happy with the way it went on Thursday but there were lots of minor problems that if it had happened after the cuts we wouldn’t have overcome. We would have been stuck if we didn’t have the same number of pumps.”
A Fire Brigade spokesman said: “We are confident the redeployment of fire engines in the capital did not have any adverse effect on our response to the London bombings on Thursday.”