Daily Ireland

Attacks under fire

A British government campaign to reduce violent attacks on the North’s firefighters has backfired and made the situation much worse, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has claimed.
Firefighters’ morale has now plummetted because they expect to be attacked on every call after months of increasingly violent incidents, according to FBU spokesman Jim Barbour.
The latest violent attack on firefighters took place on Monday night during a call-out in Co Tyrone. Firefighters were extinguishing a chimney fire at Windmill Hill in Dungannon when they were attacked by a gang of teenagers throwing stones.
No one was injured but local station officer Davy Laurence warned that a firefighter could easily have been killed.
He said: “There were two crew members on the roof of the building. If they had slipped because of the stones thrown at them they could have been seriously injured.”
Within the past four years there have been 1,500 attacks on the emergency services in the North of Ireland. The majority of these attacks have been directed at firefighters. Sixty four calls ‘for assistance at civil disturbance attacks’ were also made to Fire Brigade headquarters in Co Antrim during a three week period earlier this month.
The British government has already spent £600,000 on a media advertising campaign to try and stop the attacks. However, this campaign has been slammed as a “waste of time and money” by the FBU’s Jim Rodgers.
“The campaign was ill-advised and all it has done is to inspire copycat attacks. The situation is getting worse but the government seems to be waiting on a tragedy to happen before it will begin to take these attacks seriously,” he said.
“Firefighters are seething because they believe they are going to be attacked on every call, yet no one seems to interested in doing something about it.”
Last week, the North’s Health and Public Safety Minister, Angela Smyth, rejected claims that the number of attacks on firefighters were being played down by the British government.
However, Mr Rodgers is accusing the minister of taking a “sticky plaster” approach to the situation.
“Firefighters on the ground are on the receiving end of these attacks but the minister isn’t bothered about doing anything about it. Her sticky plaster approach to the problem has failed because the plaster keeps coming off.”
Mr Barbour is demanding the introduction of more cross-community interaction schemes to educate young people on the dangers of attacking firefighters.
“We have always believed that this is the best way forward because people don’t need a media campaign to tell them these attacks are wrong,” he said. “We have had cross-community events in Belfast and Derry in recent weeks where firefighters interact with young people. This has proved to be extremely successful and is an example of the sort of thing that should be implemented.”