TRAMPOLINES or airbags could not have been used to break the fall of a man who leapt from a top-storey hotel window, firefighters said today.

Although a common sight in television cartoons and Hollywood movies, fire chiefs said none of North Yorkshire's fire engines carried such equipment.

They were responding to questions raised by Press readers in the aftermath of the young man's horrifying jump on Thursday in York.

Reader Dave Spaven wrote to us to ask: "Why didn't the fire brigade offer some method of breaking his fall? I have seen this done in America using airbags or even something held by firemen beneath where the victim could land."

Station manager Carl Boasman, of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: "We are simply not equipped with that sort of equipment. I am aware that there are companies that make things that are inflatable and collapse as people land on them but we don't have them."

Mr Boasman said "space was at a premium" on the county's fire engines, which are limited in the amount they can carry.

He said: "Breathing apparatus and hydraulic cutting equipment, for example, is used on a regular basis something inflatable, or a trampoline, would only be used very rarely. You tend to see equipment like that in American movies perhaps even firefighters standing around with a sheet but, to my knowledge, nobody carries it in the local area, and I don't know of any services that do elsewhere in the country."

York's fire chief Graham Buckle, said firefighters brought "high reach equipment" to such incidents, but that was usually only used to lift police officers up to the right height. He said: "We are very much directed by the police at times like this."

l The man, who threw himself from the top floor of the Ramada Encore Hotel in Micklegate, was in a "stable" condition in hospital yesterday, police said.

Sergeant Jeremy Wilkinson, of North Yorkshire Police, said: "The injuries he sustained do require a hospital stay for a number of weeks."