THE response of fire crews to Storm Desmond is more evidence of the need to keep rural fire stations open in South Cumbria, a union has said.

Cumbria County Council wants to close five fire stations across the county - including Arnside and Staveley - in an effort to save £55m over two years.

It says it could save £375,000 by closing the stations.

Last month the Gazette launched a campaign - Save our Fire Stations - urging council chiefs to throw out the plans.

It has received a lot of support with many people signing our coupon and the online petition.

This week Dave Burn - brigade chair for the Fire Brigades Union in Cumbria - said the recent flooding had shown just how vital they are.

“Unfortunately it takes events like this to highlight how we need resources in certain areas,” he said.

“All the stations around Cumbria are strategically placed to provide fire cover across the county and the removal of them reduces our ability to respond.”

He said that when full-time firefighters were responding to the flooding it fell to stations like Arnside and Staveley to be on hand to deal with “day to day” incidents like road accidents and house fires.

“If they aren’t there then that resource is going to be coming from further away,” he said.

“In the fringe areas they don’t have the full time fire services and withdrawing the part-time fire services means they will take longer to get there.”

He said this was especially true if roads had been affected by flooding as they were in the recent deluge.

“In a place like Cumbria it is very, very difficult to drive around and if a road is out of action we are taking a significant amount of time to get there”, he said.

“We will take no pleasure in saying: ‘We warned you this was going to happen’.”

Cumbria County Council said it did not want to comment.

Sign our campaign at www.change.org/p/cumbria-county-council-a-westmorland-gazette-campaign-save-arnside-and-staveley-fire-stations-from-closure.