Fire service leaves girl trapped

A fire service has apologised after mistakenly refusing to help an eight-year-old girl trapped in a school toilet in Greater Manchester.

She was stuck in the cubicle for almost an hour after control room staff initially refused pleas for help.

A firefighter at the station had agreed to help after a call from the headteacher at the school in Oldham.

But minutes later the school was called back by a call centre operator who recommended ringing a locksmith.

The girl, a pupil at St Anne's Church of England Primary school, got into difficulties when the cubicle lock jammed on Wednesday last week.

There was quite simply a breakdown in communications Assistant county fire officer Kieran Nolan

Headteacher Ailsa Savill first tried to free the girl herself, but finally called Oldham fire station for help. She was called back by a call centre operator who said the fire crew would not help.

Ms Savill said: "I was obviously very angry about it so I called back to the station.

"I said how cross I was and how disgraceful I thought it was of them to leave the poor little girl stuck in there."

999 call

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service principal control officer, Liz Drummond, apologised to the girl and Ms Savill.

Assistant county fire officer Kieran Nolan said: "In this instance there was quite simply a breakdown in communications.

"The school unfortunately did not make a 999 call which should always be made if there is an emergency and the information we were passed did not indicate that the child was in any distress.

"In this case we do recognise that we could have further questioned the school to determine the seriousness of the situation, but when we were informed that the child might be in distress we responded immediately and attended within five minutes."