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Boris Johnson’s scrapping of 13 fire engines has been branded “incredibly reckless” after a pensioner died at a blaze in Barnsbury where fire crews arrived nearly three minutes late.

Raymond Lister, 86, was found unconscious by firefighters inside his smoke-filled home in Ripplevale Grove in the early hours of Sunday. They took nearly nine minutes to reach him, with the single engine from the nearest station in Upper Street already busy dealing with a flood at a nearby property.

He lived alone in the three-storey terraced house.

Neighbours this week paid tribute to Mr Lister – known to friends as Ray – and said: “You couldn’t have wished for a better neighbour.”

His death came less than 48 hours after the Mayor of London overruled members of his own fire authority, who voted on Wednesday last week to save the 13 engines, including one from nearby Holloway.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has warned that the cuts mean Islington will have lost 60 per cent of its fire cover in the past three years, leaving just two engines for a borough with a population of more than 200,000.

FBU London secretary Paul Embery said: “It would be incredibly reckless for Boris Johnson to continue with his planned cuts until all the lessons from this tragic incident have been learned.”

The cause of the fire is under investigation but it is believed it may have been started by an electric blanket in the bedroom, which ignited a horsehair mattress.

The first engine took nearly nine minutes to arrive from Holloway station – just under three minutes over the target time. The second engine, sent from Euston, arrived after 10 minutes and 56 seconds. The target is eight minutes.

On Friday, Mr Johnson issued a legally-binding directive to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, forcing it to scrap the 13 engines to plug a funding gap of £3.6million.

Two fire engines were lost when Clerkenwell station closed in January 2014. Holloway has been missing one of its two engines since August 2013 when it was one of 13 engines taken out of service to be used in the event of strike action.

They were due to be returned in June 2015, but Mr Johnson personally intervened days beforehand and directed that they be kept out of service until plans to meet budget cuts were agreed.

Mr Embery, who used to serve at Islington Fire Station, said: “The missing second fire engine from Holloway would almost certainly have been mobilised to the fire alongside the first Holloway engine, and would have reached the scene quicker than the engine from Euston. Had Clerkenwell fire station not been closed, its crews might also have reached the scene more quickly.

“Londoners are being put at risk to meet the mayor’s unreasonable budget demands. There must be a suspension of further cuts before more lives are lost.”

London Assembly Labour member Andrew Dismore said: “Obviously more detailed investigations need to be done, but what happened here confirms what I’ve been saying: that we can’t afford to lose these 13 pumps. If they had got there two or three minutes earlier, then who knows what would have happened?”

The Tribune’s sister paper, the Camden New Journal, has highlighted the way fire cuts are affecting attendance times with its Thin Red Line campaign.

The ability of the brigade to cope with two incidents at once has been scrutinised after fire crews took more than 13 minutes to arrive at a fatal fire in Camden Town, with the delay blamed on a second blaze that was raging in nearby Finchley Road.

An LFB spokeswoman said poorly parked cars contributed to the delay on Sunday. She added: “We would like to offer our condolences to the friends and family of the man who sadly passed away at this fire.

“We aim to respond to all incidents as quickly as possible, but unfortunately on this occasion our fire engines were slightly delayed due to poorly parked cars and road-width restrictions making it difficult for them to get to the scene of the fire.”

A spokesman for the Mayor said: “Fires and fire deaths in London remain at a record low as the London Fire Brigade continues to do an excellent job. In the two-and-a-half years since these 13 appliances have been held back from the frontline, response time targets have continued to be comfortably met.”