Special Appliances

Greater Manchester has a variety of special appliances. There is an increasing trend to alternately crewing these appliances this means that if it is mobilised to an incident a fire engine at the station is taken out of service due to no crew being available or another special appliance becoming unavailable. Some of the appliances also require an additional crew of a fire engine to operate or support them.

Areas of concern are;

• W52 Horwich (Bolton) will crew the Hose Laying Lorry this makes the single fire engine unavailable. 
• E36 Bury (Bury) will crew the Environmental Protection Unit making the single fire engine at night unavailable or reducing the station to one fire engine by day.
• E31 Littleborough (Bury) will crew the Hose Laying Lorry this makes the single fire engine unavailable. 
• E32 Heywood (Bury) crew the Water Incident Unit by day both fire engines will be come unavailable and at night the single fire engine will be unavailable.
• W61 Eccles (Salford) crew the Water Incident Unit by day & night both fire engines will become unavailable.
• W62 Irlam (Salford) will crew the Incident Command Unit if this is required the fire engine will be unavailable.
• E40 Stalybridge (Tameside) crew the Incident Response Unit by day this will make one fire engine and by night this makes the single fire engine unavailable.
• E42 Hyde (Tameside) crew the Operational Support Unit if this is required the fire engine becomes unavailable.
• S12 Altrincham (Trafford) will crew the Incident Response Unit if this is required the fire engine will be unavailable.
• W56 Atherton (Wigan) crew the Operational Support Unit if this is required the fire engine becomes unavailable.

It is not unusual for more than one of these appliances to be used at even an medium sized incident.