AN emergency group has been criticised for not reacting when a Worcestershire village was being evacuated.

Last month, a car fire in Powick, near Worcester, sparked a mass evacuation amid fears it would explode near to the Murco garage.

There was chaos during the rush hour incident when police were forced to close the A449 Malvern road in both directions Yet the village has a parish emergency support team (PEST) which was set up after the summer floods in 2007 to deal with emergencies.

At last Wednesday’s Powick Parish Council meeting, a member of the public asked why PEST was not scrambled to help police evacuate the homes.

Parish councillor Janet Bowen, who co-ordinates the plan, replied: “PEST is for situations where the emergency services are not able to react, like the flooding when they could not get in to help us. If someone had called us to say they needed help we could have reacted to it.”

Councillor Robin Shuard added: “There were not enough police and having more people to direct traffic would have been more useful but we cannot do anything about that unless they approach us.”

However, the emergency services did not feel the need to contact the local authority and organisations such as PEST because the incident was dealt with quickly.

If a larger evacuation was needed the fire service and police would have asked for assistance.