Welcome to Ryde Fire Station

The station serves the seaside town of Ryde from its location on Nicholson Road where it shares facilities with the Isle of Wight Fire & Rescue Service, Service Learning and Delivery Centre.

Relocating from the hallowed walls of the former station deep in town, the modern build was opened in 1995 and is currently being extended to accommodate further facilities to support the station’s recent evolution from RDS crewing (retained duty system) to a combined RDS and day-crewing system.

The day-crewing system, the first whole-time component to serve the town since the end of the second world war, has enabled the station to provide a more resilient turnout and specialist roles. Between the two duty systems operational capability includes two front-line pumping appliances, one of is also equipped as a rescue tender, a turntable ladder aerial appliance and an off-road equipped Land Rover utility vehicle.

In addition to the dedicated hydraulic equipment held on the rescue appliance that facilitates a stand-alone response to road traffic collisions and similar incidents, recent specialist role expansions include rope and water rescues. Further throughout 2011 the station shall provide the services’ response to mass decontamination incidents with the installation of the appropriate appliance, equipment and training of station personnel.

The town’s recorded fire-fighting heritage can be traced back to the Victorian era where stories from the Isle of Wight Observer give insight to the at times haphazard nature of responding to fires in the nineteenth century (for more details follow this link;

As county brigades emerged in to more formal organisations the imminent war of 1939-45 forced a governmental restructuring of the capability for fighting fires caused by aerial bombardment. The capacity of the county brigades for dealing with such incidents was to be augmented by the 1938 forming of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS). This remained the case until summer 1941 when all fire-fighting organisations were formed in to one National Fire Service (NFS) and remained so during and for a short period after the war.

Post-war the NFS was made obsolete and the service split once again in to local authority controlled full-time staffed brigades and the volunteers of the AFS. These AFS volunteers remained the backbone of fire-fighting in Ryde for many decades, with the title AFS being replaced by the phrase ‘retained’ and these on-call fire-fighters came under the wing of the county brigades. On the island this became the Isle of Wight Fire Brigade until adoption of the title ‘fire and rescue service’ was introduced to reflect the wider scope of work undertaken by a service responding to the needs of a changing society.

That change was never more significant than February 2010 when the service went live with the day-crewing system of whole-time staff to provide an on-station presence during midweek days backed up with a commitment to respond from home addresses during evenings and weekends in addition to the RDS personnel.