1 hour ago
Malcolm Prior,BBC News rural affairs producer
Vital equipment used by firefighters to tackle environmental disasters and terror attacks needs to be “urgently” replaced at an estimated cost of £100m, the BBC has learnt.
The specialist hardware – used in national emergencies and first introduced to the UK after the 9/11 attacks in the US – is now more than 20 years old and at the end of its life.
A project to replace the kit was started three years ago but firefighters say they still do not have the modern pumps best suited to deal with large-scale wildfires.
The Home Office said it was currently reviewing the UK’s “national resilience assets”.
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said the need to renew that equipment was “urgent” and should not “wait until the next crisis hits”.
First brought in as part of the post-9/11 New Dimension project, it includes mass decontamination units, urban search and rescue kit, flood response boats and large high-volume pumps capable of pumping thousands of litres of water a minute.
Full details of how much specialist kit the UK has are kept secret for security reasons. It is paid for by central government but owned by individual fire services and kept in strategic locations to be deployed across the country in larger-scale emergencies.
In recent years, it has been used more and more often to deal with natural disasters linked to extreme weather events, such as the summer wildfires of 2022 and the floods of 2007.
It includes more than 50
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