Three fire-fighters retire from service

Steve Ashworth, Pete Stephenson and Andy Collison

Three fire-fighters from Rochdale Fire Station have decided to call it a day.

Steve Ashworth, Pete Stephenson and Andy Collison will retire from the Fire and Rescue Service taking with them a wealth of experience.

Steve Ashworth from Whitworth has served for 26 years.

He joined Green Watch at Rochdale in 1978. Mr Ashworth said he has had lots of “great memories” and also some sad ones from incidents he has attended including the Manchester Bomb in 1996.

For the last six years Mr Ashworth has been working as a Community Fire Safety Officer helping to spread the safety message to all parts of the borough.

Mr Ashworth said he will miss the “camaraderie of his colleagues” and his friends in the Fire Service.

He is now looking forward to spending plenty of time with his first grandchild.

Andy Collison started his career at Littleborough Fire Station in 1978 before moving onto Chadderton and then Hyde before finally being promoted into the Fire Safety Department at Rochdale 16 years ago where his role was to ensure the safety of people throughout the Borough of Rochdale.

He said: “It has been a very satisfying career and I have enjoyed it all.”

Mr Collison is looking forward to his retirement and taking a well earned rest.

Pete Stevenson began his career as a fire-fighter in 1979 at Werneth Fire Station. He has served at numerous locations across Greater Manchester.


Mr Stevenson is also responsible for the service’s Urban search and rescue team (USAR) and the UK International Search and Rescue Team (UK ISAR) and this work has involved him attending many high profile incidents within the UK and also on the International side with deployments to Haiti, Pakistan and India

Mr Stevenson’s international work as a United Nations representative has involved him attending Armenia, Iceland, Switzerland and Hungary and during the last 7 years he has been heavily involved in the European Civil Protection Mechanism and has attended training all over Europe.

Mr Stevenson commented that when he commenced his fire service career over 31 years ago, little did he realise where his fire and rescue work would take him especially on his international duties and the highlight of his career was attending the Palais Des Nations, in Switzerland as the UK representative to discuss the Haiti earthquake earlier this year and also collecting a ‘Pride of Britain’ award in November on behalf of the UK ISAR team.

Mr Stevenson went on to say that his claim to fame as a consequence of his work is having met three different Prime Ministers at 10 Downing street along with three different PM’s wives and two different Deputy PM’s all within the past 5 years.