TODAY we tip our hat to the people working in the emergency services across Oldham.

Particular praise should go to fire crews from the town’s three main stations – Oldham, Chadderton and Hollins – who responded to a large scale fire at a derelict chicken farm in Royton in the early hours of yesterday.

Their quick response and professionalism prevented the fire affecting nearly half a million square feet of wooden property from spreading to nearby stone cottage occupied by a couple, where diesel and LPG gas presented a serious risk to safety.

Several days ago, the same crews were involved in a quelling yet another blaze on the moors near Stalybridge, apparently started deliberately. Will the idiot perpetrators ever learn?

And during rush hour yesterday, the full complement of emergency staff – police, fire, paramedics – were scrambled amid distressing scenes when a woman in her 20s was hit by a Metrolink tram.

Within minutes the area was sealed off, roads were closed and the woman was taken to hospital in an air ambulance in what appears to have been an efficiently co-ordinated response to a distressing situation for the woman, her family, and commuters trying to get to work.

It’s never nice for by-passers to be delayed in these circumstances, but it is incidents like this which make you realise how fragile life is and that we’re all potentially one small step away from tragedy.

What might need to be considered at later date is whether there should be more effective safety measures in places where trams, pedestrians and vehicles are sharing space.

We know that trams give that endearing toot, whenever they approach pedestrian areas, but should the public be crossing tramlines other than at specifically designated places where it is safer?