cat on a two storey roof

When I started this blog it was my intention to write about my life and times in horticulture, with an occassional foray into art and travel (partly to cover the days when I hadn't done any horticulture).  But yesterday I saw a story in the East Anglian Daily Times so awful, funny and mind-bogglingly silly that I feel I must share it with you.  It was so ridiculous that I checked the date carefully, several times, to make sure it did say April 5th and not April 1st.  I think it must have been a genuine story, because the senior officials in the organisation concerned have apologised to the public in today's EADT.

A cat was seen on the roof of a two storey house, in Leiston.  Somebody called Suffolk fire brigade, and the fire brigade sent a turntable ladder from Bury St Edmunds, which is 60 miles from Leiston.  They also sent firefighter crews with specialist training in working at height from Felixstowe, 30 miles away, and Bungay, 20 miles away.  This was to comply with national 'working at height' regulations.  Then an on-call retained firefighter from the local crew at Leiston climbed a ladder and rescued the cat, as regulations permit firefighters to work temporarily from the top of a ladder.

In total more than 20 firefighters were dispatched, but that's not the best bit.  The part that made me undecided whether to laugh, lie on the floor crying hysterically, or just hit myself over the head with a shovel, was the justification offered by the chairman of the Suffolk branch of the Fire Brigades' Union.  This is what he said, according to the EADT.

Health and safety says that if we go up on to a roof, it brings into play our working at height procedures and safety system.
If a cat is stuck on a roof, there is a chance the owner could get distressed and try to rescue it themselves and we would end up having to rescue them as well.
It is crazy and it’s overkill and if we are having to send five teams to an incident like that, what happens if there is a serious incident elsewhere?
It strengthens our case that we need more people to make sure we have enough cover to cope with the demands of the service.

NO.  No, no, and thrice no.  No.  This incident does not mean that we 'need more people to make sure we have enough cover to cope with the demands of the service'.  It means that we need to interpret health and safety regulations in a sensible fashion.  It does not require three specialist crews to rescue a cat safely from the roof of a two storey house.  It requires a ladder and two sensible people, one to climb the ladder and one to hold on to the bottom of the ladder.  And maybe a bag to put the cat in.  If I were doing the risk assessment I'd say that the person who climbed the ladder shouldn't be afraid of cats.  And that's it.  No need to extrapolate from the actual position, that there is a cat, possibly stuck, on a roof, to the entirely hypothetical position that there is a distressed owner on the roof as well.  We cannot afford this sort of idiocy.

You can read the original story here and the management's subsequent red-faced apology here.  You will be glad to know that fire chiefs say that lessons have been learnt.  The cat was fine, by the way.  It ran off.