Carlisle firefighters in factfinding mission at Carlisle Cathedral

The crew were taken round the building and were able to see angles of the 900-year-old cathedral rarely seen by regular punters.

Crews also saw this unique snap of the historic 'Willis' organ (Image: Carlisle East Fire Station)Journeys were taken up the organ loft, into the belfry and up the tower as firefighters learnt more about the building and how best to tackle incidents in the building.

“Although it was a great trip and you get to see the behind-the-scenes parts of the cathedral, it's also very useful to identify potential risks where staff could potentially be tackling an incident,” said Stu Forrester, crew manager at Carlisle East.

Another unique view of Carlisle Cathedral's iconic roof (Image: Carlisle East Fire Station)“There’s a very narrow spiral staircases to get up to the bell ringing room in the cathedral and there has been an incident in the past where somebody had a medical emergency in there, and the fire crews had to get them down, so we’re trying to foresee those risks that could happen and making plans in case they do.”

Carlisle Cathedral's belfry (Image: Carlisle East Fire Station)Fire crews regularly make visits to important and prominent buildings across the city to help their plans in case of an emergency in one of the many historic sites in Carlisle.

“Modern buildings are built with fire safety in mind so they've got lots of fire escapes and got fire compartmentation between different parts of them, whereas, the older, historic buildings, there was no sort of fire safety regulations when they were built so although they've retrospectively applied them as best that they can, it's more the sort of narrow accesses and different compartments that we wouldn't normally find in a modern building that provide the challenges for us.

Firefighters had to tackle some very narrow staircases in the cathedral (Image: Carlisle East Fire Station)“We visit Carlisle Castle and the Cathedral but there's also factories that might cause us potential hazards and dangers as well.

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“We review them and just familiarise the crews with those sites, just to make sure that if there is an incident in them that we know how to deal with them as effectively as we can.”