A PROJECT to record the history of Blackburn fire station has been awarded £25,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Phoenix Project, thought to be the only venture of its kind in the country, will use the money to digitise all of the records currently held by the fire station and put them online.

The group of volunteers who are running the project are also planning to travel around the country to make oral recordings of interviews with current and ex-fire fighters and their rel-atives, in order to preserve the history of the fire service in Blackburn.

The project was the brainchild of firefighter Andy Taylor, who went to a meeting with former Blackburn mayoress Samira Jane Al-Obaidi, where she told him about another project that had recorded the history of miners in Lancashire, and suggested that the fire service do something similar.

Steve Brown, a fireman at Blackburn fire station is now running the project, with the help of fellow Blackburn firefighter Charlene Winchester.

Steve said: “There’s a massive history. We’ve got books going back to 1912, everything that happened every day was written down, but they were just deteriorating stacked in a cupboard. I approached the Heritage Lottery Fund with the idea and a few of the lottery people came to the fire station and they persuaded me that it was a good idea.

A team of volunteers have come together to run the project, including serving and ex-firefighters, local history groups, and students.

They hope that by putting the information online, people from all over the world will able to trace their fire fighting relatives in Blackburn.