Cumbria's Chief Fire Officer, Rick Ogden, has commended the response of his team after a major weather incident over the weekend.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service was part of a multi-agency response launched after heavy snowfall across the county.

Mr Ogden expressed his pride in how the team dealt with the challenging circumstances.

Rick Ogden, Chief Fire Officer, said: “I am immensely proud of the role Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service played, alongside our emergency services and local authority colleagues, in response to the extreme conditions we faced at the weekend.

“Our firefighters had an exceptionally challenging weekend but, once again, rose to the challenge and worked tirelessly to help those in need.”

At 9pm on Saturday, a crew from Ambleside were deployed in a 4x4 vehicle to collect and deliver bedding, and to assist police in providing welfare in the local reception centre for more than 200 members of the public.

At 11pm on the same night in Kendal, a crew assisted North West Ambulance Services in a time-critical extraction from a stranded vehicle.

At 2am on Sunday, on-call crews in 4x4 vehicles were tasked with assisting police with locating individuals in stranded vehicles in the Satterthwaite area.

And on Sunday evening, the service assisted in transporting an engineer to a remote United Utilities plan in order to prevent the loss of water to 400 homes.

Throughout the emergency phase, the fire service assisted United Utilities in delivering bottled water to areas without supply, and fire stations were used as collection points for water and emergency centres for responders.