Addressing serious threats are all in a day's work for fire service leader Brian.

IT is reassuring to know that the man helping lead the regional battle against any potential pandemic is used to dealing with emergencies.

In fact, addressing serious threats are all in a day's work for Brian Hesler, whose main job is as the chief fire officer and director of community safety in Northumberland.

He is now helping co-ordinate the response to the spread of swine flu from Mexico. Mr Hesler chairs the Northumbria

Local Resilience Forum (LRF), bringing together the emergency services, council chiefs as well as other agencies and utility firms.

The forum has drawn up a detailed pandemic influenza plan covering Northumberland and Tyne and Wear, with its counterpart in County Durham and Darlington doing the same for its area. That blueprint is now coming into its own after the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the alert over a potential flu pandemic to four on a scale of six.

Mr Hesler said: "What it is for us is a trigger to take a closer look at the plans we have. I met my staff yesterday and made contact with the LRF members yesterday as well.

"It is not at this stage a pandemic yet.

This is purely precautionary work to make sure that the plans are fresh in everybody's minds.

"We have confidence that our plans have been effectively put together and we are all at this stage dusting off those plans, checking everything is in place and raising awareness in all the public services.

Those plans have been prepared over some considerable amount of time and they have been exercised on a number of occasions locally, regionally and nationally." An incident room has not yet been set up, but LRF members are now in constant discussion with information also coming from Government. Mr Hesler said: "I have convened a meeting of the Northumbria LRF later this week. It is currently arranged for Friday.

"Having said that if anything does escalate further, I will convene it immediately.

I don't think people need to worry about it at the moment. That would be a step too far. We just need to be aware of the issues around it and taking advice from the health sector.

"And that advice is readily available on the WHO and Health Protection Agency (HPA) websites, and other health-related websites.

"There is a stockpile of anti-viral drugs in the UK and obviously they would be mobilised as necessary and some are already being used on some suspected cases.

"My view and this is a personal view, the way that the flu virus is being transmitted and it is already in the UK, I think it is inevitable that we will see cases across the UK. But there is no guarantee that there will or won't be one in Northumbria.

That is something that is unpredictable at this stage. But I think it is likely we will have instances in Northumbria..

Having said that, cases we have seen in the UK have been controlled very successfully by the health sector. We have had no deaths outside Mexico so far and the virus does seem susceptible to these anti-viral drugs "The UK in particular is very well prepared for a potential pandemic flu event. We are probably one of the most prepared countries in the world. I think France is probably the nearest." William Green

For breaking news updates on the swine flu outbreak, go to www.journallive.co.uk

CAPTION(S):

IN CHARGE Brian Hesler.