Surrey firefighter says Chobham Common crews 'relied on food donations'
The blaze in August burned for several days.
A Surrey firefighter said crews battling the Chobham Common wildfire, which broke out in August, would have been "falling like flies" without kind food donations from the public.
He said some colleagues were not relieved by other crews for sometimes 15 hours, while battling the expansive heath fire over several days last month.
Surrey Fire and Rescue Service said it was not true that they did not provide welfare, but admitted more needed to be done to get rations right on scene.
In an email to Councillor Paul Deach the firefighter wrote: "Surrey Fire and Rescue Service has no welfare provisions to offer firefighters breaks from the fire front as well as refreshments.
"As you can imagine, in the harsh conditions we have experienced over the last few days, the firefighters were spending between 10 and 15 hours at the incident. Usually there would be relief crews sent to take over after four to five hours.
"They are exhausted and need sustenance."
Temperatures even outside the 500-acre expanse of fire tipped 30C.
Chief fire officer Steve Owen-Hughes said he had received letters from other fire and rescue services, deployed from elsewhere to assist with the major incident, that said "the welfare that they received was very good and that they felt they were very well looked after".
He said: "Sometimes on a very rare occasion all of us have to dig in a bit deeper and work that little bit harder, and you will have seen those tremendous wildfires over in California where some of those firefighters are away from home and deployed for a long, long time. Luckily, we don’t have that here very often."
The firefighter’s email continued: "Food and water provisions are in the form of water bottles on the appliances, which obviously get very hot in these conditions and hot packs which offer no real nutritional value.
"If it wasn’t for the donations the firefighters would be falling like flies."
It was read out earlier this week (16 September) to members of Surrey County Council’s communities, environment and highways select committee, who had just been told of the success of phase one of the Making Surrey Safer plan.
Conservative Cllr Paul Deach, who serves Frimley Green and Mytchett, said: "My primary concern is firefighter welfare.
"As you can imagine that presented quite a lot of concern when I read that and I’m sure members of the public will be equally concerned."
He asked the chief fire officer for an assurance they would review their welfare provision.
Mr Owen-Hughes said it was something they already reviewed after every incident.
He said: "What we’ve realised is that in a large incident like this one spread over a large area for a long duration, it’s not the fact that we can’t get the welfare to the assembly point, it’s the last half mile.
"We’ve made plans to look at how we do that with new 4 by 4 vehicles to get them over the last half mile."
He added: "We do have a good welfare provision. We have contracts with rapid relief that were in place right from the beginning of that major incident.