SOMERSET fire officers have been helping to save lives by supporting the Gypsy, Roma and Travellers History Month which took place in June.

Every year gypsies, showman and travellers attend Glastonbury festival to work on site.

Liz Clegg, a retained firefighter from Totnes, and Mike Toop, Yeovil Support Group Crew Manager,took the opportunity before the arrival of the public to visit the mixture of caravans, vans and trucks offering fire safety information, as well as distributing free smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.

Liz Clegg said: “Community safety work is an important part of our role in the fire service.

“In order to help people stay safe it’s important that we understand, talk to and listen to them in a language that they can relate to.

“By walking around and chatting to gypsies, travellers and showman we can focus on their needs and tailor our home safety visits to suit them.

“We know that many aren’t accessing the range of services that settled people do automatically so we are making sure that we get message out to them.”

Ruth McGill, a traveller living in a caravan with her husband Theo and their two children said: “I think it’s great when the fire service make an effort to come to our world and making themselves familiar and available to us.

“Essentially that’s what Liz and Mike do and it’s brilliant. Thankfully we’ve never had to call on the fire service, but if we did we would.

“There is still work to be done, as there are other travellers who are much more isolated physically then we are, who haven’t had positive experiences with the public services and may feel less inclined to call them.

“They won’t know they are entitled to smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.”

Mike Toop said: “Every person who lives in a caravan knows someone who has died in a fire.

“When someone’s caravan catches fire and burns down they not only lose their home but all their belongings. Getting insurance cover for a caravan owner is impossible.

“Liz Clegg understands the community from her own personal experience as a traveller and understands how we operate as a fire service which creates an important combination of skills.”

Susan Alexander, administrator from the Travellers Aid Trust said: “Last year we did a joint project with Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Service to provide carbon monoxide detectors for travellers throughout the South-West.

“I distributed 70 myself, including some at the festival.

“I monitored all 70 of these travellers and 18 of them had previously had direct experience of a fire in their living vehicle, 38 were unaware of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning from wood burning stoves.

“So that’s over half of the beneficiaries that didn’t realise their lives were in danger.

“One of the reasons I decided to monitor this information was that until I spoke to the fire service I thought that the only risk from carbon monoxide poisoning was from a gas fire in a caravan.

“I thought if I wasn’t aware of this, then how many other people weren’t. So if we’ve only achieved that outcome, then that’s a tremendous thing.

“We do know of one family of six, who got back in touch with us. They live in a static caravan and their detector was set off by their gas fridge in the middle of the night.

“Because it was activated the family were all able to escape safety. That one result alone is a great outcome.

Susan added: “Travellers are now asking us about the fire safety project, wanting more information and asking for more things around fire safety. The project is working as its raising awareness and has saved lives.”