Subscribe to trusted local news
In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
- Subscription costs less than £1 a week with an annual plan.
Already a subscriber? Log in here.
16
Jan
Local fire station didn’t have enough crew to respond to man in freezing lake
Masham Fire Station has said it didn’t have enough crew to respond when a man and his dog had to be rescued from a freezing lake yesterday.
Emergency services were called to Marfield Wetlands when the man fell through thawing ice trying to help his dog, as reported here.
Masham Fire Station, on Red Lane, is just one mile from the wetlands but was unable to raise a crew.
The fire station posted on social media last night:
Unfortunately, we were unable to attend this incident due to insufficient crewing. This type of incident is time critical and would have likely seen us at the scene within minutes if we were available.
Masham Fire Station
The post went on to thank firefighter colleagues at Leyburn, Ripon and Richmond, as well as Yorkshire Ambulance Service, North Yorkshire Police and Yorkshire Air Ambulance for attending.
It urged anyone interested in joining the Masham crew to visit the station between 7pm and 9pm on Wednesday evenings.
'Real challenge to get people to commit'
Masham is one of 25 on-call fire stations in North Yorkshire, crewed by volunteers who provide cover from home or their place of work. The other ones in the Harrogate district are at Boroughbridge, Knaresborough and Summerbridge.
Ripon is one of seven day-crewed stations. Between 6pm and 8am it relies on volunteers.
Harrogate, Acomb, Scarborough and York are the county’s only wholetime shift stations crewed 24 hours a day by paid staff.
There is a proposal for one of Harrogate’s two nighttime crews to become on-call.
Summerbridge's on-call fire station
The Stray Ferret has reported previously on concerns about the availability of volunteer firefighters. You can read an article about the situation here.
In September last year we reported new figures showing the overall average fire engine availability had decreased from 76% in 2023/24 to 70% in 2024/25.
Wholetime firefighter availability was 95% in 2023/24 but the availability of on-call firefighters was just 68%.
Damian Henderson, area manager and director of service improvement and assurance at North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, said at the time:
At some of our locations it is a real challenge to get people to commit to being on-call firefighters. It is something we are really working on. The on-call station manager is working with members of the on-call communities as well as employers to try to attract people into North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
0