Incident Overview 4 July

Another busy night for Strathclyde Fire & Rescue with lots to keep our firefighters on their toes

Another busy night for Strathclyde firefighters, who attended a total of 208 incidents in the last 24 hours, including 81 fires and a number of other rescues.

• At 11.30pm last night, two crews from Clydebank Community Fire Station were called to attend a refuse fire in the town's Riddell Street. It soon became apparent that not only was a pile of rubbish well alight beside a shop, but that the fire had spread to affect the main building. The incident commander requested further support and Clydebank firefighters were joined some five minutes later by colleagues from Knightswood. Firefghters donned breathing apparatus and entered the burning building, extinguishing a fire in a 20 x 20m roof space. Thermal imaging cameras were used to ensure all pockets of fire were out.
• At 11.45pm that same night, a strong smell of burning alerted residents of a block of flats in Clavering Street East in Paisley who put in a call to our Operations Control in Johnstone. Two paisley crews arrived at the scene to find a fire in the second floor of a three-story tenement block. Firefighters immediately began a full search and rescue operation, donning breathing apparatus and using hose reel jets to extinguish the blaze. One man was rescued from the flat and was taken by paramedics to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley suffering from smoke inhalation and minor burns.
• At 3.23am this morning, a fire in Wood Street, Coatbridge, resulted in firefighters being mobilised from the local community fire station. Arriving at the scene, the crew found a fire in a coal cellar at the rear of a house, which they were quickly able to extinguish. One male casualty was rescued from the building and was successfully treated at the scene by paramedics.
• Our firefighters also had to deal with 18 'open hydrants' in which water hydrants were maliciously tampered with and left to flood the surrounding area. Open hydrants represent a real drain on the local community, causing a huge amount of damage and hampering firefighters attending fires.