Firefighters During The Troubles by John Wilson

Author:John Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstaff Press

Billy Hamilton

Joined the full-time service in Derry/Londonderry in 1969, initially serving at Northland Road in the city.

There was a guy had a television shop on the Strand Road and two guys came in from the Provisional IRA and left a bomb with him and went out again. He promptly lifted the bomb and took it out to the street. After liaising with our senior officers and the ATO, we were instructed to set up a ground monitor and disperse the bomb from a safe distance. Now a ground monitor is a large jet of water that can be left unattended and allows us to withdraw, so we just put the ground monitor on the bomb, dispersed it, and then went back to the station – and that was it.

A couple of days later we got a call to a chimney fire in the Bogside Inn. At that time nobody could get in to the Bogside area without the IRA’s say-so – they had their own checkpoint set up. I think even the bin collections had been suspended by the council. When the crew were turned out to the Bogside Inn they were told by the Provisional IRA to clean the street – ‘You were able to clean the Strand Road, so you can get your hoses out and clean this street’. There was no violence or intimidation or nothing. I think they were just letting us know that they knew we had dispersed the bomb. At the end of it all, the boys who went down even received a bottle of whiskey to take back to the station …

Things did get difficult – especially in the Bogside. If they wanted you in, you had no trouble getting in at all. It was only if they had barricades up – buses or vans they had stolen – that you knew they didn’t want you in. It would depend on what you were going to or what you were attending. Then when it was dealt with, you would have probably got stoned when you were leaving. It was like recreational rioting to some people.

Billy also vividly remembers the fire at the Melville Hotel.

Of all the incidents I attended, the only one I can remember the date of is the Melville Hotel: 21 November 1971. Everybody was there. Because of the situation in the city then, we regularly had to bring in Strabane and Limavady to back us up. It was a Saturday night, I was off duty and the alerter went off. My wife was due to give birth – our daughter arrived two weeks after that incident – so initially I wasn’t going to go, but I knew it was going to be something big, so I made my way up to Northland Station. There was a spare appliance and whoever turned in was getting sent down to the fire at the Melville Hotel straightaway. The thing that sticks in my mind is that I was probably the last person to speak to the two firemen that were killed, Lexie Wylie and Leonard McCartney.

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