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Duty in line of firemen

Ailsa Cranna
20/10/2005

SALFORD firefighters came under fire from rebel gunmen as they searched through the rubble to free survivors of Pakistan's earthquake.

Rob Kelly and colleague Andy Roughley had to be pulled off their rescue mission and sent back to the safety of their camp as the bullets flew between the rebels and government troops.

Eventually, the men and the rest of their seven-strong rescue team from Greater Manchester Fire Service were airlifted to more remote villages to carry out their work in relative safety.

Rob, 48, of Clifton, said: "The area is very volatile with different factions fighting each other and the government.

"On top of this, the earthquake had thrown the whole area into absolute chaos. I don't think the gunmen were aiming at us - they were just frustrated that the troops weren't handing out emergency supplies quickly enough and people were starving.

"We were moved back to our camps and whilst we were in our tents at night, we could hear the gunfire going off in the streets some distance away."

Rob is part of the UK Search and Rescue Service and has seen action in other earthquake zones, notably India in 2001 and Algeria in 2003.

His team, from Greater Manchester Fire Service, were quickly assembled on Saturday, October 8 and flown out to Pakistan. Within an hour of landing they had rescued a 36-year-old man trapped by his arm under the rubble that was his home.

The following morning they rescued another man and helped locate a third survivor trapped underneath all that remained of his chemist's shop.

For the rest of the seven days the team had the grim task of locating bodies were located. It was, said firefighter Andy Roughley, 44, of Eccles, a harrowing job.

"What made it worse was when desperate families would plead with us to find their relatives, and we then had to tell them we couldn't do anything.

"In one of the buildings, the bodies of 300 schoolgirls were trapped and in another, a man's 50-year-old wife and 20-year-old daughter were killed.

"There can't have been one family that did not lose a loved one in the earthquake."