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Ashes fall like snow
15 July 2006 22:46Thursley is an amazingly perfect village, old cottages with front gardens full of flowers backing onto fields full of livestock guarded by old hedgerows and set between oakwoods and Thursley Common, one of the only areas of lowland peat bog in southern Britain and a nationally important nature reserve.
I mentioned there was a fire there yesterday - the BBC reported that the fire service had it under control by around six o'clock in the evening (using over a hundred fire personnel, two of whom ended up in hospital) and sure enough it was much less smoky by the time we got there at around midday today, although there were still five fire engines, nine or ten fire cars and a bunch of police on the village recreation ground.
You're probably seeing a problem with this picture, perhaps relating to the combination of peat and fire. We ended up spending most of the afternoon at the yard because the fire, having burned down into the peat, flared back up very severely, reaching the edge of the village and throwing up a massive column of black smoke. The emergency services evacuated the village and closed all the roads in or out, partly because there were so many sightseers and journalists getting in their way and partly because the fire was simply too big to control and the wind too unpredictable to make anywhere safe.
( 50 acres of SSSI, burning )
We came home smelling of bonfires. The good news is that the police have apparently found someone who is likely to be responsible for this fire, another one near Reading and the fire at our barn a couple of months back, among many others.
The bad news is that my parents have been evacuated. Their house isn't in immediate danger but the emergency services don't want to have to worry about people getting trapped there if the wind changes direction.
I mentioned there was a fire there yesterday - the BBC reported that the fire service had it under control by around six o'clock in the evening (using over a hundred fire personnel, two of whom ended up in hospital) and sure enough it was much less smoky by the time we got there at around midday today, although there were still five fire engines, nine or ten fire cars and a bunch of police on the village recreation ground.
You're probably seeing a problem with this picture, perhaps relating to the combination of peat and fire. We ended up spending most of the afternoon at the yard because the fire, having burned down into the peat, flared back up very severely, reaching the edge of the village and throwing up a massive column of black smoke. The emergency services evacuated the village and closed all the roads in or out, partly because there were so many sightseers and journalists getting in their way and partly because the fire was simply too big to control and the wind too unpredictable to make anywhere safe.
( 50 acres of SSSI, burning )
We came home smelling of bonfires. The good news is that the police have apparently found someone who is likely to be responsible for this fire, another one near Reading and the fire at our barn a couple of months back, among many others.
The bad news is that my parents have been evacuated. Their house isn't in immediate danger but the emergency services don't want to have to worry about people getting trapped there if the wind changes direction.