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RESCUE CREWS NEED WATER TRAINING

People on Romney Marsh want local crews trained to rescue car crash victims from water so they do not have to wait for specialist help from Maidstone. 

But Kent fire service said training was not possible at part-time stations, and it would put crews in danger. Equipment would not have changed the outcome of the Dungeness crash, said emergency planning director Bill Welsh.

Dymchurch Parish Council said the marshland's winding, unlit, single-track roads were surrounded by water, that there was no gritting in winter, and chances of sliding off the road into ditches on either side were "high". Chairman Tom Gibbs said public subscriptions had been used in the past to pay for defibrillators, and it was a possible way to fund the wet suits and training firefighters would need.

But Mr Welsh said money was not an issue. He said rules changed five years ago after a retained firefighter died in another part of the country while attempting a rescue in water: "We had really unsafe practices at work where people used to go in with just a line tied around their waist," he said. He said firefighters now did not enter water out of their depth.

Mr Welsh said extensive courses and regular refreshers needed for rescues within water were not possible at part-time marshland fire stations, where crews had three training hours a week. Kent had four water safety units used mainly for flooding incidents, he added.

In the past five years there had been four incidents on the marsh involving cars immersed in water, he said.