Fire service response tested at Mid UK site

The ‘table top exercise’ is being carried out alongside Lincolnshire Emergency Planning, Lincolnshire Police, East Midlands Ambulance Service, local authorities, the Environment Agency and health agencies along with voluntary and private agencies.

As part of the exercise the agencies will work together to coordinate a response to a waste site fire in order to hone responses to future incidents and assess whether improvements can be made in the county.

Mid UK Recycling is the subject of the simulated incident, following a fire at its Barkston Heath facility in Lincolnshire in July (see letsrecycle.com story).

This was the second time the site had suffered from a blaze after it was hit by fire in early 2013. A large amount of equipment was destroyed when a fire tore through the Mid UK’s Caythorpe MRF in 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Plan

Sean Taylor, divisional commander at Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue, said: “We’ve had a number of incidents at recycling centres over the past couple of years, most recently a severe fire in July this year, which caused significant issues and disruption for the local community. We need to learn from these events to ensure we have comprehensive, robust and reliable plans in place should another incident occur.

“As well as allowing us to create detailed prevention and contingency plans, the exercise will enable us to test the county’s agencies in working together to quickly deliver solutions for the affected community – whether this be details of road closures, health warnings or help for livestock.

“It is our job to keep the community as safe as possible, so it is imperative that we all, as emergency services and public agencies, know how to act quickly and work efficiently and effectively together in the event of another incident occurring.”

Testing of the emergency service response in Lincolnshire comes as tests of a controlled burn of waste wood is carried out in Yorkshire, in order to assess the rules around material stack sizes at waste storage sites (see letsrecycle.com story).

The unrelated test, which is being carried out by the Chief Fire Officers Association at Stobart’s waste wood site in Pollington, Yorkshire, will look at the effect that rising columns of gas have on fuelling waste fires, wind-current effects, and how different materials burn or smoulder depending on their make-up.

The controlled burn tests are being part-funded by the Wood Recyclers’ Association.