Manchester Arena attack: police accused of delaying firefighters

Manchester’s former fire chief has blamed police for the two-hour delay in firefighters arriving at the scene of the arena bombing, saying his service was left in “an information vacuum”.

Peter O’Reilly, who was chief of Greater Manchester fire and rescue service (GMFRS) at the time of the attack, said the police forcefailed to communicate effectively with the fire service to assess the threat level and dispatch officials to the scene.

O’Reilly, who retired this year, criticised the findings of the official Kerslake report, which reviewed the response by emergency services to the bombing and found that the fire service played “no meaningful role” in its aftermath. He said the report exonerated the police force.

Speaking to the Irish News, he said: “I have no doubt that, had proper protocol and policies been followed, the firefighters of GMFRS would have been at the Manchester Arena within minutes of the bomb exploding.”

Though the attack on 22 May last year took place just after 10.30pm, the first firefighters did not arrive at the scene until 12.37am. O’Reilly received a call 37 minutes after the attack while asleep at home, and made his way to headquarters by around 11.45pm. He told The Irish News he was horrified that his crew were not at the scene and had been left in “an information vacuum”.

“For me, I will always regret that the fire service weren’t there within minutes,” said O’Reilly. “Every one of these firefighters was trained to help these people in their darkest hours and that was taken away from the fire service to be able to do that.

“On the night in question, I believe the fire service should have been there. We had worked very, very closely with our colleagues in the ambulance service to train our firefighters up. We had trained our staff up to respond to terrorist attacks.

“They weren’t able to do that, simply because police didn’t live up to their responsibilities of having a conversation with the fire service. If they did, we would have been there.”

O’Reilly said it had taken until now “to have the strength to talk about all this without being extremely emotional about it”.

The Kerslake review found that GMRS “played no meaningful role in the response to the attack for nearly two hours. This compares with an average response time for the service of less than six minutes”.

The fire service “was effectively ‘outside the loop’, having no presence at the rendezvous point established by the police, little awareness of what was happening at the arena and only a very limited and belated presence at strategic gold command”, said the report, referring to the command hierarchy used by the emergency services during the operation.

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester police said: “The criminal investigation into the terrible attack of 22 May continues. In addition, the coronial process is now being presided over by the retired high court judge Sir John Saunders and consequently we cannot comment further at this time on matters which the inquest may wish to consider.”