Firefighters are struggling to tackle a major fire that has engulfed a scrap metal recycling plant in Liverpool because of government budget cuts, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has said. The fire at Seaforth Docks is currently in its third day.
Mark Rowe, secretary of the FBU in Merseyside, said: “This type of fire should be relatively routine for firefighters to deal with but as a result of government cuts, our response has been hampered. Since 2010, 269 firefighter posts has been axed in Merseyside and the number of fire engines has been reduced from 42 to 28. This has meant, for example, we no longer have the resources to rotate the fire crews responding to the fire. We have firefighters still at the scene up to five hours after their shift has ended.
“If another incident of a similar size occurred at the same time, we would simply not have enough firefighters to deal with it. The number of fire deaths has more than trebled in Merseyside over the past four years. It is crucial that we have the right amount of fire engines available to deal with house fires whilst dealing with emergencies such as the Seaforth Docks fire. Government cuts have gone too far and we are simply unable to provide the service to the public that we used to provide.”
Resources were so stretched over the weekend that fire crews from Greater Manchester had to respond to a house fire in Allerton, Liverpool.
