The Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service has confirmed that it was called to the site, just off the Ringwood road in Poole, at 8:22pm.
Eleven fire engines were present with over 60 firefighters working to bring the fire under control. The fire was eventually extinguished at around 11:30pm, although crews were on the scene until the early hours of Saturday morning, the Fire Service said.
A spokesperson for the Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Service said: “In so far as what started it, we believe a car that was brought in that day had an electrical short circuit and caught fire, which spread throughout the yard.”
‘Too late’
Director at Charles Trent, Mark Trent, told letsrecycle.com the incident happened at a compound where vehicles are stored on behalf of insurance companies, rather than on the main site.
He told letsrecycle.com: “The fire service was called in at about 8pm, there was someone working at the time who tried to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher, but it was too late.
“The fire brigade came in as soon as they could, and they did an excellent job of containing the fire. They managed to save 100 vehicles – we had 300 on site.
“Any fire will have an impact on a business, but we managed, over the weekend, to get everything ready to open on Monday.
“We recover over 40,000 vehicles a year –we have done for a long time– and we’ve never had an incident like this. We are reviewing our processes now to see if we can avoid this happening again in the future.”
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