The Fire Service’s blow-by-blow account of the Michelins Farm fire can be found on their website here. There are some good photos as well.
Here’s a few extracts:
Firefighters are tackling a large tyre fire near the Fairglen Interchange on the A130. The incident commander reports that a pile of tyres covering an area of 50 metres by 20 metres and stacked two metres high is alight. Crews are using three ground monitors and one main jet to control the blaze.
Update 15:00hrs Wednesday: Three crews continue to work breaking up the pile and tackling the fire. Incident Commander Dave Barritt said: “Work to break the tyres up and extinguish the fire is going well and we hope to scale the operation back considerably this evening.
“The decision to use diggers on the pile early has proven to be a very good one and that early intervention has reduced the amount of time we will have to be here in total. Crews have been working extremely hard at this protracted incident.”
Update 20:44hrs Wednesday: Crews are preparing to leave the scene planning to revisit at midnight as firefighting operations come to a halt. Firefighters have used three stinger monitors (high volume foam monitors) three ground monitors, four main jets, two light portable pumps and two diggers during the 48 hours they have been tackling this major blaze.
We’d like to thank them for all their efforts and hard work…..
The fire service have done a great job. It was a bad blaze, very dangerous for them and the working conditions must have been horrendous. They just kept at it and slowly and methodically dealt with the situation. A great job by a great bunch of professionals who are under appreciated until you actually need them.
This incident really brought it home to me what our firefighters put themselves through on our behalf. Heartfelt thanks from me too.