‘Temporarily blinded by firework’

DAVE GILLIAN, a firefighter and Fire Brigades Union rep was temporarily blinded by a firework thrown at him in 2016.

The attack happened in Keighley near Bonfire Night.

He said: “We got a call-out to a lamppost on fire, which is a bit of a strange one, I’ve never come across that before.

“There was a plate at the bottom with electronics behind it and that was smouldering, so we went down there. I think it had basically been laid as a trap to get us down there.

“As we were looking at it to work out what to do with it, fireworks came raining down on us.

“We were near a fence and they were basically hitting the fence and bouncing back at our feet and going off there.

“Nobody was hurt, we had our protective gear on, but one exploded between my feet. My main instinct was to put my hose on it but before I could do that, it went off.

“I got temporarily blinded, I couldn’t see for a few seconds, and we all had ringing ears for a few days.”

Mr Gillian, 40, said he believed one of the reasons fire crews were targeted was because they were seen as an authority figure.

He described attacking firefighters as “crazy and wrong”.

But he said perpetrators were often from deprived areas and had been “starved of opportunity”, adding that the answer was to invest in youth services and education.

Mr Gillian said he wasn’t surprised that the Protect the Protectors law had so far had little effect on those who attack firefighters.

He said: “I suspect there is not one single one of them who would know about this legislation, so I think it’s a bit of gesture politics unfortunately.”