Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Firefighter recalls
Long-server looks back on 46 years of callouts
A LONG-SERVING retained firefighter has recalled some of his biggest callouts – including the 2001 Morgan Academy blaze – as he prepares to retire after almost half a decade.
Tayport-based Brian Hughes helped tackle more than 5,000 fires, including some of the most ferocious incidents to hit Fife and Dundee.
But now he has finally hung up his uniform – 46 years, seven months and three days after his first call-out.
And the 65-year-old said: “It’s been great. I would certainly do it all again.”
Of those thousands of calls, Brian points to three memorable events.
The first was in 1976, just a year after he joined the service.
Hamilton Hall, then a student halls of residence owned by St Andrews University, was on fire.
Tayport was one of the closest stations and Brian was called into action.
The building was closed for renovation and a painter’s blowtorch was blamed for sparking the flames that ripped through the roof of the former Grand Hotel building.
The copper dome was also lost and there was a huge amount of interior damage.
But thankfully, nobody was injured.
Then, in March 2001, the Tayport crew made a rare trip to Dundee to one of the city’s biggest and most significant fires ever.
Morgan Academy was engulfed by 30ft-high flames when he arrived.
“We didn’t often get called to Dundee but that was a huge fire,” said Brian.
“It was quite spectacular. We were initially moved to stand by at Glenrothes and when the scale of it became apparent, we were moved on from there.”
Despite heroic efforts, the secondary school could not be saved and has since undergone a £20 million rebuild.
The third of Brian’s most memorable incidents came just a year later.
He was one of more than 100 firefighters to tackle a huge blaze at Noble’s scrapyard in Kirkcaldy.
The fire was so intense that an exclusion zone was put in place and all trains on the main east cost railway line were suspended as smoke billowed over the track.
“That was another big one,” said Brian.
“There were 22 appliances there and we worked through the night.”
For Brian, fighting fires and helping casualties is in the blood.
He is the second of three generations to join the retained duty system in Fife, with dad Wallace blazing the trail before retiring at 55 after 24 years.
And son Alan also joined the retained service in Tayport, but has now been a full-time firefighter, based in Glenrothes, for around 10 years.
Brian is a plumber by trade and also runs a local hardware store.
But he joined the then Fife Fire Brigade’s retained duty system in 1975 when he was just 18.
This meant he was always on call and paid to respond to emergencies in the same way as whole-time firefighters.
Training was on a Tuesday night.
“We had a bell in the house and there was a siren in the town,” he said.
“If you heard the siren, you just ran.
“We all moved on to carrying pagers in later days, which made things a bit easier.”
He added: “Back in the day, you were on call 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week with no paid annual leave. That only came in 10 to 15 years ago.
“On average, we dealt with 120 calls a year.”
Over the years, Brian worked his way up the ranks of the fire service, ending his career as watch commander.
And when the bell rang, he did not have far to go as for many years he lived right next door to the fire station.