Rushing to watch someone die

Well could you?  Could you stand by and listen to a trapped woman moaning in agony, knowing you and those around you have the skills and the equipment to help the suffering person?  Well could you?

You would have to be a special kind of person to just stand and listen for six hours to someone first begging for help, then moaning  and whimpering in pain before finally falling silent and dying six hours later.  You would have to be a "modern" man to handle that.

Well you will be ashamed to learn, that Strathcylde Firemen can handle events like the above and have shown they are just as cowardly and as stupid as their English counterparts south of the border, who watched a man die in eighteen inches of water in case they laddered their tights or split a fingernail trying to rescue him.

The Scotsman paper reports that Fire Crews could only listen to Alison Hume's cries for help after she fell 60ft down a disused mine shaft, because their regulations said that their equipment could only be used for saving themselves and not members of the public.

But a memo from Strathclyde Fire and Rescue chiefs four months earlier had banned the use of rope equipment for lifting members of the public to safety, the inquiry was told.

Mountain rescue experts eventually freed Mrs Hume six hours later, but she died after suffering a heart attack as she was taken to the surface.

Christopher Rooney, the first senior fire officer at the scene, admitted it would have been possible for his crew to have rescued Mrs Hume from the shaft, had it not been for the memo.

During the hearing, solicitor Gregor Forbes asked Mr Rooney: "On the basis of the manpower and equipment that you had available, is it your view it would it would have been possible for the firefighters to have brought the person to the surface before the mountain rescue team?"

He replied: "Yes, I believe so."

The now-retired fire officer said the memo had been circulated around Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations in March 2008.

Mr Forbes said: "Your position is that, while you were supplied with safe working-at-height equipment, while this could be used to bring up firefighters, it could not be used to bring up a member of the public."

Mr Rooney, 51, told the inquiry at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court: "Yes, that's correct."

All 18 firefighters at the scene were trained and capable of using the equipment, he added.

Of the memo four months before the incident, he was then asked: "If Mrs Hume had fallen down the shaft on 13 March, instead of 26 July, you could have used a lowering line?"

Mr Rooney replied: "We could have."

Well I hope those 18 brave Firemen who stood and listened to Alison Hume's dying cries for help, hear them in their minds until the day they die.  However, I suspect they will have no time to think, as they will all no doubt be putting in compensation claims for stress suffered as a result of having to listen for six hours to a dying woman whimpering in pain.  Must have made them feel simply dreadful. 

You know if it was not for the "real" men and women of the British National Party I would give up in despair at what pathetic creatures our nation has bred.