Fire chief leads service's inclusive new era

From spending £38 million on new stations to banning the word fireman', change is happening in every corner of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service

- NEAL KEELING

FIREFIGHTING is in Dave Russel's blood his father was chief of the Lancashire service.

He knows how tough the job can be. But taking charge of a beleaguered Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service has tested his own resilience to the limit.

Just over a year after becoming County Fire Officer he was dealt two blows one professional and one personal - on the same day.

On December 15, 2021, government inspectors published a report saying his brigade required improvements in two out of three categories.

Chillingly, they also concluded that, four years on from the Manchester Arena bombing, the service remained unprepared to respond efficiently to a terrorist attack.

On that day, Russel's close friend and trusted colleague, Steve Morgan, who had followed him from the Lancashire service to Greater Manchester to become an assistant county fire officer, took his own life, aged 49.

This came as GMFRS was attempting to emerge from its 'darkest hour' of operational failure.

Firefighters, desperate to help, were held back by their own commanders from responding to the Arena attack on May 22, 2017, which killed 22 people and left more than 800 with physical or psychological injuries.

The debacle had badly damaged the reputation of the service and widened the gulf of mistrust between its frontline crews and top brass.

But Russel did not buckle in the face of these new setbacks. He had joined Lancashire fire service just days after his 19th birthday in 1991. Most of his 29 years there were operational.

He had shed the albatross of being the chief's son and carved his own impressive path to become deputy chief there.

He had also made a pledge to himself and the politicians who gave him the GMFRS post at a critical point in its history - to get a service perceived by many as rudderless, morale-damaged and, in some ways archaic, into a new era.