Male Interviewer
This is the fire service?
Zena Welton
Yes, my father was an officer in the Martham fire service, we used to have a siren outside the wall near the front door and a telephone, and if we got a telephone call for a fire my father would say, ‘wait and let me get dressed before you blow the siren’, bit crafty, and he’d blow the siren and all these men would bike down to Martham fire station which was in Reps road in them days, and off they’d go to the fire.
Female Interviewer
How long were you working for the fire service?
David Utting
I was a retained fire officer at Martham fire station for 30 years, from ’75 to 2005, I actually retired in 2005. Was made up to what they called a Leading Firefighter in 1982, and then 3 years later I was made up as the officer in charge of the station. I ran the station on my own right through til 2005. We used to get turned out roughly four times a week. The maximum calls we had was about 200 in a year.
Now I think they do between 50 and 60. I can remember during the long hot summer of 1976, I set off for work at 8.30AM, I almost got to work and my pager went off, and we had 17 calls within 24 hours, I didn’t get home until the following evening at 4 o clock, and we on the go all the whole, so it was well over 24 hours that we were on the go out solidly, kept going to various calls.
Female Interviewer
Throughout your time were there any false alarms or odd calls that you would receive?
David Utting
During the 80s and 90s, unfortunately, children used to think it was great fun to come down on holiday to Hemsby, because they thought they couldn’t be traced or caught, and they used to put in alarms to say various things were on fire in Hemsby and surrounding areas, of course that was a complete waste of time and resources.
Particular firefighter had rather large ears which would stick out a bit, and we used to send him up because, if there was a cat on the roof, he would put his head above the parapet, and he would look over and they would see him, and would shoot off the roof of their own accord, so we didn’t have to rescue them, they would rescue themselves!
We were called down to one of the holiday chalets at the beach at Hemsby, got a call saying a person’s trapped. When we turned up we were confronted with quite a large gentleman who told his wife, quite a large lady, had taken a bath and unfortunately she couldn’t get out. She was just unable to get out of the bath. So we had to grab some blankets, protect her modesty a little bit, and retrieve her from the bathtub.
John Bradfield
In 1938, the sea came through Horsey and flooded all the marshes.
Killed all the trees on the marshes.
But there was a long road between Somerton and Horsey.
But that was all flooded through. Ryland Randall, he got stuck on the middle of these roads with the floods, and he had to get out of the roof of his van, and sit there all night, and he’d be rescued the next day.
Zena Welton
The floods took so long to clear that every weekend cars and cars came to Martham, and we couldn’t see out of our windows for weeks. It took ages to go, for the water to subside, and when it did subside, because it was salt water, all the vegetation and trees were just dead.
