‘Disgraceful’, ‘despicable’ and ‘awful’ are just three of the words being used to describe a recent attack on Cambridgeshire firefighters while they were attempting to extinguish a bonfire last week.
The crew affected, from Peterborough’s Dogsthorpe fire station, were called to Paston Ridings, opposite Sheepwalk, on Thursday at around 7.30pm.
Having almost finished putting their equipment back on the fire engine, the driver reported to his colleagues that a lump of concrete had been thrown at the vehicle, smashing one of the windows, Luckily, though, the safety glass on the fire engine stopped a sizeable chunk of concrete from coming through the window and seriously injuring the driver.
Immediately afterwards, another member of the crew was struck on the foot by a stone.
Lynn Betteridge, station commander, said: “This is a despicable act.
“Our firefighters protect their communities and put their lives on the line every day to save and help others and treatment like this, although extremely rare in Cambridgeshire, is unacceptable.
“All of our fire engines have CCTV so we will now be working with police to review any footage and hopefully catch whoever is responsible for causing this damage to our property and distress to our staff, who luckily, on this occasion have not been injured as a result of the attack.
“If anyone knows anything about this incident or knows who is responsible, please can they contact police on 101.”
She added: “We cannot let people get away with treating our emergency services with such disrespect.”
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