Snow heroes

I WOULD like to pay tribute to the emergency services for keeping us safe during the severe weather.

I am incensed at criticisms from people who found themselves in difficulty because they didn’t heed the warnings and decided to chance their luck and travel needlessly.

We have seen our emergency services working day and night in appalling conditions, putting themselves in danger. People need to take responsibility for themselves, and to stop and think before they act.

The emergency services are there for — guess what? — emergencies. MAGGIE MORSE, Brynamman, Dyfed.

WHILE I sympathise with those who suffered from the disruption caused by the snow, we should remember that the UK rarely suffers from this sort of weather. So to equip the nation with the means to deal with snowdrifts and blizzards would be prohibitively expensive when the situation lasted just four days.

To criticise the lack of suitable equipment is unfair. After all, how many motorists bothered to buy snow chains? DAVID SPENCER, Bridge, Kent.

RAF LEEMINg in North Yorkshire ‘trains, delivers and supports UK and overseas Expeditionary Air Operations’. Yet last week the airfield was closed because of snow and its aircraft were all in hangars.

The RAF can’t find the funds for the right equipment to keep an important air station operational in adverse weather conditions, yet it can find the cash for more than 100 Red Arrows personnel to operate 13 obsolescent aircraft that have no operational role.

Our defence priorities are skewed. Less show, more substance is essential for the defence of the realm. Lt Cdr RN LESTER MAY (rtd), London NW1.

THE West Coast main line was closed for days due to snow? No, it was closed because Network Rail did not have the right equipment.

Using a digger to clear the line was pathetic. One steam train fitted with a snowplough would have cleared it in just a few hours. JOHN SMITH, Warrington, Cheshire.

THE week I spent during the big freeze of 1963 providing the steam on the engine while a man with a steam lance was outside in the cold de-icing the points all around Cardiff station (Letters), I earned the grand sum of £18 and nine pence for 96 hours, not 18 shillings.

Thanks to our hard work, no trains were cancelled. GRAHAM WILLIAMS, Cardiff.