County Durham: more than 200 emergency callouts

Saturday's floods in Durham City. Credit: Suzy Gibson-Cummings

The control centre for County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service took almost 250 calls this weekend resulting in more than 200 emergency callouts.

These responses involved all 15 stations across the service areas between Friday morning (December 4) and Monday morning (December 7).

The Dales area (Stanhope, Barnard Castle and Middleton-in-Teesdale) was particularly badly affected. Flooding incidents and helping with dangerous structures were the most common callout, however CDDFRS also attended a wide range of other incidents including: fires, road traffic collisions (RTCs) as well as assisting other agencies and medical emergencies.

Although the River Tees burst its banks at Croft and the River Wear burst its banks in Durham the impact fortunately was not as significant as in previous years.

The service also sent a high volume pump to Cleveland Fire Brigade on Friday (December 4) to help with a large fire at a waste recycling centre in Hartlepool. A number of crews also covered stations in Teesside at the height of this incident.

An expert also advised Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service about flood operations in Corbridge.