Carlisle was left with just four or five full-time firefighters to keep the city safe on a single night, a union has claimed.

The level of professional fire protection being offered to the city has been cited by the county’s Fire Brigades Union (FBU) as part of an effort to highlight what it claims is an “unsafe” level of cover caused by dwindling firefighter numbers.

In Carlisle the last decade has seen their numbers fall dramatically – with a shift formerly covered by 16 firefighters cut to 10.

Workington and Whitehaven have seen a similar reduction, with the numbers down respectively from nine to four and from eight to four, says the union.

The issue came as figures confirmed a big drop in firefighters across Cumbria. In the past five years, their number have been cut by 49, reduced from 239 in 2011 to 190 last year.

Dave Burn, the FBU’s Carlisle-based county secretary, said: “On Christmas night, in Carlisle, there were four or five full-time firefighters on duty. They didn’t have the resources to bring people in on overtime.

“This is being addressed.

“But in Cumbria crewing is now in a really, really dire situation. They’re trying to sort it out by recruiting but our fear is that they are not going to recruit enough.

“We believe it’s unsafe to have so few firefighters.”

Mr Burn said the root cause of the problems facing the service was reduced government funding.

He said: “Over the course of the last eight years, firefighter numbers have dwindled significantly.”

The FBU also claimed there had been a reduction in the number of fire engines available in the county, with some retained stations such as Keswick having only one rather than the two they once had.

Mr Burn added: “If we still had the same level of resources that we had 10 years ago we would not be having this conversation.

“The service is getting around £7 million less in funding now than it did then.

“If we have two fire engines at a house fire in Carlisle, we bring in ones from Longtown and Brampton to provide additional cover for Carlisle in case there’s another incident on top of the one we’re already dealing with.”

The county council said the number of fires had fallen by 50 per cent in the last 10 years.

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service said that some of the figures quoted by the FBU are misleading and there had been no reduction in the number of operational fire engines in the county.

There were 45 operational fire engines in Cumbria 10 years ago and that figure remains the same today.

A spokesman added: “It does not take our crews any longer to attend incidents and we have a performance target across the whole county of the first responding appliance attending the scene within 10 minutes.

“Sadly, it is a fact that people die in fires for a number of reasons, for example due to lifestyle or illness and not because of the number of firefighters who are available to respond.

“In most cases, people who unfortunately lose their life in fires have been overcome by smoke inhalation before the fire engine arrives.

“We have fewer firefighters now than 20 years ago, however every public service in the country has changed dramatically over that period of time with staff numbers and working practices changing to ensure we can all deliver the best possible service to our communities as effectively and efficiently as possible”.

He said the service had just taken on 12 new firefighter recruits to fill vacancies.

“We also carry out ongoing recruitment campaigns for on-call firefighters in areas across the county.”