‘Lack of fire engines will cost lives in big incident’ was the headline that The Argus used for one of my letters that it published last October.

Well, according to a report in Wednesday’s Argus (May 27), what I suggested last year could well happen when a discarded cigarette caused a fire in a high-rise flat in Hove.

Because there are now so few appliances in the city firefighters from Hove and Preston Circus stations had to be backed up by crews called into action from Newhaven and Lewes, a distance in both cases of 12 miles.

Fortunately the flat, which suffered considerable heat and smoke damage, was unoccupied at the time.

If there had been people trapped in the flat how much good would appliances and their crews coming from so far outside of the city have been?

Would lives have been lost?

Bearing in mind that it was a large block of flats, how many lives?

The idea that it is possible to give adequate fire cover to a city the size of Brighton and Hove using just four fire appliances, two at Preston Circus and just one each at Hove and Roedean, must be rethought before the tragedy that I predicted six months ago actually happens.

Eric Waters, Ingleside Crescent, Lancing