So you think they should be able to respond to to 3 worst case scenarios simultaneously? Because all fires are treated equally. I'm sure we all know how quickly a fire on board an aircraft full of fuel can escalate, especially when you add in hazardous materials like Lithium and Carbon Fibre
I think you MAY have a point. I assume each fire station in LHR is responsible for 1 runway and the gates/terminals/hangars are assigned to whichever station is closest?
When was the last time LHR had 2 fires at the same time? I also wonder how long it takes to turn around the airport fire vehicles after they have discharged their foam and get them ready to roll again
If the fire cover was increased to be able to handle three, four ... incidents then apart from the huge increase in costs then I can imagine the comments in the media if there was a serious incident involving loss of life and there was a whole fleet of fire appliances sitting in the fire station. They would probably ask why the airport had not been closed to make them available.
Rather than each fire station being responsible for a different runway, I wonder if there are two separate ones to protect against a worse case scenario where an aircraft hit the fire station and disabled the whole fleet?
They might not often have two serious fires simultaneously but they have to allow for training where one fleet of the fire appliances might be involved in training with a dummy fire so could have emptied their tanks of at least the water.