Tue 25 Apr 2006
Irish Examiner: FIREFIGHTERS are ill-equipped and insufficiently trained to deal with a major nuclear disaster, the National Firefighters Committee said yesterday.
Chair of the committee Brian Murray was commenting on Ireland’s emergency planning after the screening by RTÉ of Fallout, a docudrama about a nuclear disaster at Sellafield.
“There have been no exercises carried out in the middle of a major urban centre in this country to see exactly how the fire services could deal with such an accident,� he stressed.
And while Britain has 80 instant response units capable of dealing with mass contamination, Ireland has none.
Mr Murray said attempts were being made to have a decontamination system available round the clock in Dublin but it had yet to be put in place. more