Councillors have demanded urgent talks with the fire service after it emerged that only four of the town’s 17 firefighters turned out to tackle a serious blaze which destroyed a building.
Dingwall Players lost costumes dating back decades in the fire at their clubrooms near Dingwall Community Centre on Saturday night.
But now Councillor Alister Mackinnon, Dingwall and Seaforth, is calling for a meeting with Scottish Fire and Rescue Service after learning that only a handful of the town’s firefighters were available for duty during the incident, meaning the town’s second fire engine could not be mobilised.
Just four retained crew were available on Saturday night, and a second pump was brought from Beauly, with specialist equipment brought in from Inverness.
Mr Mackinnon said that the situation was “unacceptable”, adding that unless it was sorted out, lives could be put at risk.
According to figures for the third quarter of 2014/15 (October-December), Dingwall’s second appliance had an availability of 43%.
The figure for the first appliance during the same period was 99%.
A fire service spokesman said yesterday that the service was happy to speak to Mr Mackinnon.
He added: “Dingwall’s second appliance availability figure was 43% for quarter three. However, the latest figures for quarter four show a massive increase in availability (72.2%). This increase can be attributed to the ongoing and targeted engagement between locally based managers and retained duty system (RDS) staff across Scotland, including Dingwall.
“The service works closely with employers and RDS staff to support an improvement in availability. However, we do recognise the challenges faced by RDS staff when combining primary employment and their operational availability across communities.
“We recognise these challenges exist and we will continue to work hard to improve availability. The new and improved recruitment process routinely identifies new trainees right across the service area, including Dingwall, which in turn improves availability.”
The spokesman added that recruitment was ongoing for retained firefighters and that two were transferring to Dingwall and a new trainee was also due to join, bringing the available crew up to 20.