Sickening allegations emerge of firefighters sharing photos of dead women trends now

Often they are hailed as heroes — our brave emergency frontliners willing to risk life and limb to protect the public.

Seen as fearless, they run towards danger with just one aim: to rescue victims and save lives. In tragic outcomes, they are the ones who deal with the traumatic aftermath.

That may be the enduring public image of Britain’s firefighters, but this week it was dealt a devastating blow.

Amid allegations that some firefighters at Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service had, on more than one occasion, photographed female car crash victims, police have now launched an investigation.

The pictures, it is claimed, were shared on an informal WhatsApp group, along with degrading comments about the deceased victims.

One anonymous female firefighter told an ITV News investigation this week how colleagues would ‘make comments about the type of underwear the women [wore] in the car crash’.

She said: ‘Retrieving the body of someone dead should tear you apart, not make you want to take photos of it, just to joke about it later. Because that’s someone’s loved one, isn’t it? That’s someone’s relative.’

Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service has now commissioned an independent review into what it calls ‘deeply concerning’ allegations of criminal behaviour, which it has referred to the police, and further claims of sexual harassment. 

The alleged harassment includes reports of female firefighters being sent explicit, unsolicited photographs and messages by male colleagues.

In a statement this week, a spokesperson for Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service said: ‘We are shocked and appalled to hear these allegations. There is an expectation for our staff to work in line with our code of ethics, which sets out high levels of expected behaviours.’

But the accusations of sexism and misogyny are by no means confined to Dorset and Wiltshire.

In fact, it’s thought to be so widespread that the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North-West, Nazir Afzal OBE, has told the Mail: ‘This isn’t a London problem — it’s a nationwide problem, and I think what we are seeing now is the Fire Service’s #MeToo moment.’

The allegations from Dorset and Wiltshire come just two months after Mr Afzal’s damning report on the London Fire Brigade (LFB), which found a ‘toxic’ culture of misogyny and racism in the service.

Now, he reveals how he has been ‘inundated’ with messages from female firefighters from all over the country making similar allegations.

‘I’ve received dozens and dozens of emails and messages from firefighters, invariably women, saying: “We are suffering, too,” ’ he told the Mail.

‘There is no fire service in the UK where women feel safe. It’s that bad, and it’s not confined to the capital. They are sharing equally awful experiences of abuse and misogyny.’

Speaking exclusively to the Mail, one of those female firefighters — from central England — described a catalogue of disturbing incidents which she said had plagued her career of more than 20 years.

She claimed that as a young probationary recruit, a male trainee had cornered her alone, put his hands around her throat, and threatened: ‘I can do to you whatever I like.’

Later in her career, at one station, she allegedly found a dead animal in her locker and what looked like semen on her bedding. Another time she claims she was locked in a lift and left there as a ‘joke’.

Another time, she alleges, a male colleague borrowed her phone, on some pretext, found an intimate photograph of her and uploaded it to her social media, leaving her feeling upset and humiliated when friends, family and colleagues saw it.

Most disturbingly, she claims she was called into the office after a firefighter took over her breathing apparatus set, to be told the contents had been extremely low.

She claims she and her manager believed it may have been deliberately tampered with, as she’d had a few issues on the previous watch.

She alleges the manager said he would investigate only if it happened again. Tampering with equipment is, as she says, ‘potentially life-threatening’ for her and the public.

‘There are a handful of male firefighters who I believe genuinely hate women and don’t want them in the service,’ she says. 

‘They do not believe women can do the job and they try to force us out.

‘If you complain to management, the people responsible are spoken to quietly, then the abuse gets worse because you are seen as a snitch. So most people just keep quiet and it all gets swept under the carpet.

‘If there are no repercussions for bad behaviour, the culture will not change.

‘Many of my male colleagues have been great to work with, very supportive, but there are a few who are just toxic. I’ve been left feeling paranoid and in tears, and at points in my career I’ve wanted to leave. But I refuse to quit because I love my job. I will not be forced out.

‘I went into the fire service to protect the public, but the public have a right to know what working in the fire service can be like.’

Mr Afzal says accounts such as these come as no surprise to him: ‘One woman told me: “There is a FIFO culture” in the Fire Service which meant “Fit in or F*** off”. Women are routinely told they are expected to conform or leave.

‘The informal WhatsApp groups we heard of in Dorset and Wiltshire this week are commonplace. Men are routinely sharing pictures of women, mocking them and abusing them, and it’s impacting on the public.

‘As people saw in my report, firefighters were going into homes on fire safety visits, taking pictures of

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