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Merseyside Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan talks about the recent knife attack in Southport and the ensuing riots, saying that the learning from the Manchester Arena bombing and other major incidents meant that the service was better prepared for a joined-up, assertive and effective response.
The murders of three young girls in Southport shocked us all and the far-right riots that followed led to a week of violence and disorder on our streets not seen since 2011. I talk to Merseyside’s Chief Fire Officer about how his staff responded to the knife attacks on 29 July and the civil disorder, to find a positive story of planning, preparedness and partnership working.
Fundamentally he’s proud of the way his staff responded from the first 999 call to the outreach community activity that continues to this day.
Southport has its own community fire station and with the local ambulance crews also based there and the police just around the corner. The responders knew the venue of the attack, maybe the people too and that explains why His Majesty The King turned up recently to thank them all, cup of tea in hand.
Thinking back to that Monday in late July, I ask Phil why firefighters are sent to a report of a knife attack when it feels intuitively like a police matter. He immediately talks about major incidents – from standby to declaration – and what resources the fire and rescue service bring to the response. Interestingly, it’s not fire equipment but more of an ambulance style response as his crews now have equipment that includes stretchers, defibs and trauma kits on fire engines.
The Sked Stretcher is a relatively new addition to the kit list and results from recommendations made after the Manchester Arena bombing. Sir John Saunders said that government departments should review stretcher provision by all emergency services and ensure it was appropriate and in the right place. The implementation of the ten second triage approach, another inquiry recommendation, led to changes in the way that fire and rescue services respond to incidents like the one in Southport. It means they are now equipped to work in harmony with other blue light partners in the critical first minutes of an incident where life is at stake.
“We were on scene in minutes,” he says, adding “that trauma care provided by firefighters was highly commended afterwards, our response is based on the principles that we train together with ambulance and with the police. We really see the benefit of applying the JESIP principles, particularly co-location at a major incidents like this.”
Phil makes an interesting observation about situational awareness and the importance of going to the incident and the assessment of risk that goes with it. “You can extricate yourself from a scene if it’s a little tricky, but you need eyes on to make good decisions,” he explains, “by my firefighters going immediately to the scene and not inducing a delay in their response, there are potentially young children alive today.”
“The window of opportunity diminishes every minute you take to get to the scene – you can’t afford to hesitate.”
Phil is keen to point out that going to the scene is crucial but equally, not going is important too. He unpacks this paradox. “It’s easy to get drawn in to attend, and as the strategic fire commander on duty that day, I could have gone down there to see the incident for myself, but I didn’t; I trust the people who arrive on scene first and the decisions they make.”
He was a member of a Strategic Coordinating Group, set up within an hour of the incident. Consequence management is critical to ensure that once the immediate incident is over, the next stages work and that could mean communicating with the public, with other organisations to access resources and so on.
“I didn’t find myself immersed in the trauma. It allows me to make better decisions. It’s a disciplined approach about who goes to the incident and who doesn’t.”
In a swirl of social media speculation about the attacker, his immigration status and his religion (both of which were wrong), protestors took to the streets of Southport with violent and angry scenes that rapidly spread to the rest of the city and to other parts of the country.
There was a vigil in Southport that individuals, many from outside the area, turned into protest and attacks on the local mosque. Phil says the fire and rescue service response was to be assertive but only if it was safe to do so.
“Fire started to be utilised as a weapon, to intimidate. We don’t want the civil disorder to perpetuate because of images of buildings burning because that has the potential to feed the ire of the rioters.
“We were there to support the police, taking calculated risks by sending one fire engine to deal with the incident and one to give awareness of the wider environment. We put a station manager on the back of the fire engine to provide information at pace to the tactical commanders using the Airwave radio. Working together with our police colleagues, we were able to share a detailed understanding of the unfolding situation, enabling us to take decisive but safe action to prevent it escalating and putting lives at risk.”
Removing totems for the rioters is at the heart of this assertive approach. Fire is a dramatic backdrop to riots and dealing with it, getting rid of the totem can help to dissipate the anger. One example of that is Spellow Hub library in the Walton area of Liverpool, which was attacked and suffered fire damage on 3 August. Phil says that the assertive approach they took “definitely prevented the loss of the whole building.” Such was the community support for the library, that a local fundraiser raised over £250k and attracted donations of books from world famous authors.
Phil is keen to share his service’s responses to the event on his patch because he wants to show what worked. He commends the collaboration, assertive approach and the benefits of training and exercising because they demonstrate that the service has learned from previous incidents. He says that in 2011, the riots targeted property and in 2024 the focus was on people and that changed the tactics.
He’s confident that the recommendations from the Manchester Arena Inquiry improved the way his crews responded. He is a cheerleader for JESIP, “we are getting better at it, but we need to make sure there is continued assurance of the fire and rescue service’s preparedness. It is important and ongoing and not to be forgotten.”
Many fire and rescue services dealt with riots in their areas, Merseyside was not the only one and Phil is acutely aware of that as he shares his service’s experience with me. Each service shared tactics on the night, then in slower time through their own internal debriefing and it will, no doubt end up feeding into the NFCC’s National Operational Learning process. There will be more major incidents and more to learn but, as Phil reminds me, “sometimes we need to celebrate what works.”
For more background to the riots read Emergency service leaders call for an end to violence as frontline continues to deal with far right clashes published on 5 August.
