00:02So we're here with Chief Fire Officer Mark Christian outside the scene of a major incident
00:08at Castletown and Maloo Fire Station on Thursday night. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt but
00:15there's been clearly a lot of damage. Perhaps Mark you could just guide me through exactly what
00:19happened and where we're actually within investigation. Yes agent as you'll see behind me
00:23unfortunately we had an incident last night. We were alerted to a fire alarm in our building
00:28just after 20 past five of tea time. One of our on-call firefighters had to be on the station
00:34and took the opportunity to have a look into the appliance room where they quickly discovered
00:39a substantial fire in the appliance room. The quick actions of that individual rescued quite a lot
00:44of equipment out of the ancillary side of the building and saved a lot of our PPE and essential
00:51life-saving equipment. Fairly quickly after that as you can imagine it's a commercial type building
00:57a normal attendance that you can expect at any type of incident of this nature arrived from
01:01other adjoining stations and we were met with quite substantial fire in the appliance room.
01:07Yes and the investigation is ongoing I imagine it's too early to even
01:14even preliminary conclusions but then what can you tell me about the investigation?
01:18Yeah so obviously we've got some eyewitness statements and it's clear from behind the building's
01:22really split in two so the building is partly an appliance room and then an administration block
01:27the fire has been confined into the appliance room so obviously our investigation is concentrated
01:31in that area and what we're looking at now is on the appliances and is there anything obvious
01:38gone wrong with one of them or anything that's been potentially on one of the appliances so we've
01:42had our fire investigation team here today and that work will continue over the weekend and we'll be
01:47joined probably late Monday by the insurance assessor and a forensic investigator to take us to the next
01:53stage. Right we've got two fire trucks, fire appliances stable inside the building clearly very badly damaged
02:00so are they both write-offs? I think you'll see from the one over my shoulder one of them is
02:05certainly
02:05a write-off it's too early to save at the second appliance but the reassurance really for the community
02:10at Castletown and Maloo around the corner you will see other appliances there now so they've been
02:15replenished we have other appliances now on standby here the crew are fully on standby as you'd expect
02:22in this area so the capability in the Castletown and Maloo area hasn't changed and didn't change
02:27overnight so although we've clearly lost these appliances in the short term we've got a capability
02:34here operating from this station. I think the appliance behind you is relatively new isn't it a couple of
02:39years old at most? Yes the one you'll see over my shoulder again I think that was probably commissioned in
02:442024 came on the warm last year so in 2025. These things don't come cheap? No and that's probably for
02:49another day but yeah we will have to obviously look about procurement plan of replacing them long term
02:54but as I said short term and to reassure the community here at Castletown and Maloo fire cover
03:00has been maintained and they will see no difference if they call 999 a fire engine will turn up as
03:05they'd expect.
03:05Yeah and it's a combined fire and ambulance station were any ambulances damaged in the fire?
03:11No as you said we do share this site with our colleagues from the Alderman Ambulance Service
03:16they had some staff on site at the time and they again thankfully safely evacuated and evacuated their
03:21vehicle at the same time so although they have had some losses of equipment they've not lost any vehicles.
03:28Two fire fighters were treated at the same for minor injuries just give me an idea of what sort of
03:33injuries we're talking about smoke inhalation. Yeah smoke inhalation and heat stress related injuries so
03:38they were both cared for last night on scene by our colleagues from the Alderman Ambulance Service
03:45and one of them colleagues has had to access some additional medical treatment today
03:49what the injuries are described as minor.
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