Fire in the Village.

Not much in the way of sunhine today.

I got up in good time this morning and had done all my housework before breakfast. I planned to have a restful day turning up those curtains but it wasn't to be. I took down one curtain, pinned and ironed it and only at that point did I find that I didn't have the correct colour sewing cotton. Plenty of black and white cotton and some other random colours but not the cream colour I needed. That job is now on hold until I go into town where there is a fabric shop and a craft shop that both sell a good range of sewing thread. Feeling rather grumpy as my plans unravelled I decided to cheer myself up with a walk on the beach.

At first it was just a quiet walk along an almost empty beach but then events began to unfold. In the time it took me to walk from where I took the above photo to approaching the first pile of rocks (below) clouds of black smoke were billowing out across the houses and the beach.

When the smoke first appeared I wondered if it was a garden bonfire as it was too close to be from the fields but then the volume increasd dramatically.

Here I'll jump ahead in the story and can say from everything that has been said on the local FB page thankfully nobody has been hurt in what has turned out to be a major fire. 

I'd carried on walking along the beach until I was level with the fire and then cut through to the High Street where it was clear that the fire was at the back of one of the houses on the far side of the road. At that point the Fire Services hadn't turned up, black smoke was engulfing the back of the house with a lot of cracking and the occasional explosion and flames leaping into the air. There were a lot of people out in the street but nothing like the numbers there would have been last weekend. Luckily it wasn't too long before the first fire engine turned up.

In the above photo the flames are climbing up one of the telegraph poles carrying electrical wires across the railway track. I took this photo just after a train had passed along the track. Not sure if that was the safest move by the train driver. From the FB comments it seems the fire began as a bonfire in the back garden which got out of hand aided by the strong winds.

Once the fire engines began to turn up I went back to the beach and walked home stopping a couple of times to chat with people.

Back home it took at least another 45 minutes before the black smoke turned to white indicating that the fire was under control. Standing out on the terrace I saw two more fire engines and several other fire vehicles arrive to deal with the fire. The amount of black smoke was surprising, possibly the oil (kerosene) from a central heating oil tank perhaps or as there is a chip/burger van kept out in the front of the house maybe stored cooking oil or propane tanks. After I took the last photo the smoke started to turn black again which wasn't a good sign but now an hour later the smoke is white and much reduced. There's a crowd of people standing on the beach who I'm assuming are the residents of the houses backing on to the beach across the road from the burning house. With the houses being jammed close to each other with no front gardens and the road very narrow there would have been the real danger of the fire spreading. All this happened two doors down from the pub that Peter goes to.

 

8.00 A still from a video that was taken as the train went past. Shows just how bad the fire was right at the start. The smoke is still billowing, mostly white but seems to be coming from a much wider area. Just heard that two chaps were injured by flying glass from exploding windows when they went in to rescue the family's six dogs.