22185

A call was received just before 8am from a farmer stating his chicken shed was on fire. It was decided by the fire control operator to treat the incident as a barn fire and send the pre-determined attendance for this type of incident. A further call once all the appliances were en-route indicated the size of the ‘shed’ as the caller exclaimed – “it’s the same size as a football pitch!” On arrival and after seeing a plume of smoke in the air whilst en-route, the first fire engine to arrive at the incident sent a message back stating, “Make Pumps 5” – which means 5 fire engines in total were required to help fight the fire. The crews set to work trying to establish a way to extinguish the fire and get the 16,000 chickens out of the building. They also had to deal with isolating the electricity. Using over the border fire engines from Chirk and Wrexham the number of firefighters at the height of the incident was around 45 with 5 officers also in attendance. The fire involved a conveyor and the roof space, firefighters fought the fire in 2 sectors utilising the aerial ladder platform. The roof which was slowly dismantled was then checked for hotspots using the Thermal Imaging Camera. This incident required extensive recourses from the Fire and Rescue Service including a light pumping unit to supply water from a nearby lake and a Rescue Tender to provide breaking gear.