00:00Now the Green Fire Station on the Hoot Peninsula, despite being previously
00:05marked to be closed, has now been taken off the list according to Kent Fire and
00:10Rescue Service and are now joined by our reporter Tim Foster to tell us a bit
00:15more about this. So Tim we've been following this story you know for a
00:19couple months now but you know people who are just kind of jumping in now take
00:22us back how did the story start? Well it actually began with an accidental email
00:26sent out revealing that nine stations across Kent were going to be closed
00:30now for most of Kent that was sort of by the by but for the peninsula especially
00:35it meant that only the Hoot Station would remain open for the entire peninsula as
00:39both Cliff and Brain were going to be closed. Absolutely and I can imagine there was
00:44probably quite a big public reaction to that then Tim. Yeah there were a great
00:47many protests actually that happened with firefighters families and even union
00:50reps turning out to protest this decision and when the news came through that the
00:55station was going to be saved the public were quite understandably very happy and
00:59I spoke with some of them today. I'm extremely pleased it's going to stay open
01:03because the villages around here need the fire station if they close it our
01:10nearest fire station is strewed. Personally I was sort of overjoyed because we're such a
01:17small isolated community there's so much building going on that we're sort of
01:22really stuck for a lot of sort of like essential services and to start cutting
01:28back at this stage is just absolutely ludicrous. We've got a refinery out here a
01:33power station out here we've got gas tanks for gas storage all out here if
01:39anything like that goes wrong we are cut off. So that gentleman there touched on why
01:46fire stations and I suppose fire safety is quite a big deal on the Who Peninsula.
01:52Yeah well I mean for starters there's only one road in and out of the Grain town and
01:56as you mentioned there you have the BP's aviation import terminal and Grain's
02:02liquid international gas import terminal both of which are listed by the health
02:06and safety executive as coma sites which is major hazardous industrial
02:11infrastructure areas and the fact that there's also I believe a power plant there's
02:16also a Thames port there there there really is a great hazard when it comes to
02:20fire risk. And you spoke to a local councillor a bit more about this didn't you?
02:24Yes I spoke with councillor Chris sorry Chris Spalding sorry from the Medway Council
02:31about what he had done to exact this change. I went through all the paperwork I
02:36looked at it I put a lot of submissions in but ultimately I was very
02:40well backed up by the four members of Medway Council who sit on the Fire
02:43Authority and indeed most of the members of the Fire Authority themselves
02:47regardless of whether they are Medway or KCC. I'm lucky to have a good working
02:51relationship with a lot of them. Kent Fire and Rescue have looked at a lot of the
02:55figures that we've put in no doubt chatted to the other members on the Fire
03:00Authority and said yeah okay we accept the argument for Grain.
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