FURIOUS firefighters have hit out over cuts to the Galashiels station - claiming lives will be at risk.

Staff at the Abbotsford Road station were only told of this month’s changes a fortnight ago.

Fire chiefs revealed that only 28 of the current 44 will remain in the town.

The 16 affected officers will be offered positions in either Edinburgh or Hawick.

But the changes mean there will no longer be a dedicated crew for the specialist Incident Support Unit.

And each water rescue team would be cut from six to four.

One firefighter, who we agreed not to name, said: “There are a lot of safety issues which are being overlooked.

“It goes against guidelines to only have four trained firefighters involved in a water rescue - we are told that if more trained firefighters are required we would have to wait until they were sent down from Edinburgh or Bathgate.

“If we try to carry out a rescue when there isn’t enough of us we would end up in trouble - if the police jumped in to try and help they could end up in trouble and in danger if they hadn’t been trained.” Staff in Galashiels have refuted claims by chiefs that six of the have already expressed an interest in moving to another station.

And doubt has been cast over the changes.

Another firefighter said: “Nobody knows who is being moved or where but I can tell you that not a single person stationed at Galashiels has indicated they want to move.

“There aren’t the positions available in other stations - you will have firefighters sitting around twiddling their thumbs in Galashiels waiting for positions to become available.”