Thunderbird training for firefighters funded by Government

Date published: 11/04/2008

Fire Minister Parmjit Dhanda has announced a further £3.2million grant to England's Fire and Rescue Authorities, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority gets £70,000, as part of the Government's on going commitment to support the roll-out of the specialist New Dimension equipment.

The grant is largely for training for mass decontamination response units as well as additional protective clothing for use during work on collapsed buildings.

As a national resource the New Dimension equipment is hosted by England's 46 Fire and Rescue Authorities but is easily transportable in modules - with echoes of 'Thunderbirds'. The resources include mass decontamination units, detection, identification and monitoring of unknown, potentially dangerous chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear substances, rescue equipment for use in collapsed buildings, and high volume pumps for use in floods. The Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser found in his report that the HVPs proved to be invaluable in protecting critical local infrastructure.

The grants announced today are in addition to the Government expenditure of over £200million for purchase of the equipment and grants to the FRAs for crewing and accommodating the equipment and providing other specialist services.

Fire Minister Parmjit Dhanda said: "The New Dimension special equipment is vital to resilience and these latest grants to Fire and Rescue Authorities show that the Government remains committed to fund them to crew, host and accommodate this equipment. Training is obviously vital to make best use of this equipment."

Firefighter training for use of New Dimension equipment is being fully funded by the Government. Every firefighter, some 50,000, has received basic awareness training for mass decontamination and will shortly receive basic training relating to rescues in collapsed buildings.

New Dimension equipment has been deployed at the following incidents:

• DIM equipment used in the spate of letter bombs sent in early 2007 
• USAR equipment used following the Kent earthquake April 2007 
• Over 35 HVPs deployed in the summer flooding 2007 and 15 HVPs at the Buncefield Oil Depot fire December 2005 
• USAR teams deployed to the Warwickshire warehouse fire 2007