Specialist fire unit to be closed

South Yorkshire’s Technical Rescue Unit at Dearne has 28 firefighters trained to deal with incidents such as rail and plane crashes, rescuing people from heights and saving animals in danger.

But the fire brigade’s governing authority agreed yesterday to save £700,000 by closing the unit and moving the firefighters and their equipment to other stations across the county.

The decision was approved in the final week of a public consultation on separate plans to save £10m by 2015.

South Yorkshire’s deputy chief fire officer, Mark Shaw, said moving the TRU’s equipment to other stations would improve the brigade’s response to specialist cases because the unit could currently only deal with one type of emergency at a time.

By making different stations specialise in different types of rescue, firefighters from one area could be saving an animal while crews from elsewhere could help people get down from heights.

Mr Shaw said: “We have all our eggs in one basket with the TRU at the moment.”

John Gilliver, of South Yorkshire Fire Brigades Union, said: “It is a cut and we do not like to see cuts, but in the current climate it is difficult to justify having it.

“We accept that it is a measure that needs to be taken because at the moment the authority is considering all sorts of things that we do not support at all.”

“The closure of stations and reduction in staff will have a massive impact and I can only see lives being lost because of that.”