Manchester failings

The official inquiry into the response to the Manchester Arena bombing last year makes disturbing reading. The failure of firefighters to arrive at the scene for two hours because it was erroneously believed a gunman was at large – evinces a risk-aversion that has gone too far.

When such a murderous assault happens, most people expect the emergency services to respond promptly. Yet the fire brigade was kept more than 500m away even while ambulance workers and paramedics were attending to the injured.

No one can tell for certain if their delayed attendance made any difference to the survival of the injured, but that is hardly the point. There have been too many stories of emergency responders being held back from doing their jobs, often to the frustration of individual officers. Staff in the fire control room “felt they had let down the people of Greater Manchester”, the report said.

There is always a danger after such outrages to seek scapegoats beyond the obvious. The culprit in this instance was the suicide bomber Salman Abedi, whose device killed 22 people attending a concert last May. Many of his victims were children. Whether or not he should have been picked up by intelligence monitoring was the subject of a separate report, which concluded that chances to thwart the attack were missed.

Nevertheless, the inadequate response of the Manchester fire service is in stark contrast to the selfless action of the French gendarme Arnaud Beltrame, who took the place of a hostage and died in the ensuring rescue attempt. Lord Kerslake, the Manchester committee chairman, said there had been failings in the service’s “operational culture”. In which case, it needs to change.