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Wrington Website Video
Fire on the industrial estate
Wednesday, 9th July, 2008
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The fire on the industrial estate broke out at about 3.30pm sending clouds of acrid black smoke over the village. Police stopped all traffic in the area of the fire, and began evacuating residents as this video was shot and uploaded at 4.45pm. The scene at 8am the next morning (below) was very different, but workers were not being allowed on to the site because of danger from acetylene cylinders. The school, which had been used as a Rest Centre, was back to normal.
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Subsequently, these two statements were issued from North Somerset Council:
"The police reduced the size of the cordon late last night and residents have been allowed back home. The cordon still remains in place in the industrial estate and the acetylene cylinders are due to be removed later this morning.
We will be gathering feedback from the incident and a debrief on the incident will be held within the next couple of weeks. Lessons learnt will be incorporated into a report and incorporated into new procedures.
For those not aware an outline of yesterdays events was as follows:
Around 3:30 pm yesterday we were informed that a fire had broken out on the industrial estate in Wrington and there was the possibility of an evacuation of the area. Later that afternoon this was confirmed and police evacuated residents to Wrington Primary School. ASS&H, CSU staff and the WRVS were deployed to the site where they looked after the needs of the evacuees. The number of evacuees fluctuated but at the peak there were about 50 persons in the RC [Rest Centre].
The evacuees were advised to find alternative accommodation with friends and relatives if possible as it appeared likely that the earliest they would be allowed to return would be around 1am Thursday. The Parish Council the WI and the community managed to find accommodation for all evacuees and the RC started to close sometime after 9pm. Evacuees, whilst at the RC were provided with food and drink.
Tim Downey
Emergency Manager
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My personal thanks to everyone who played such an important part in responding to yesterday's emergency so promptly.
It sounds like a real pulling together of many partners in the community and, in some ways, will have been a useful test of our systems and procedures ahead of a bigger incident - but I do realise it might not have felt like that to those of you caught in the front line.
Thankfully, I understand that no-one was injured and I agree with Tim that we now need to review the lessons learnt.
In the meantime, thanks once again.
Regards
Graham Turner
Chief Executive Officer
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