Tonnes of tires causes fire outbreak

Over 100 firefighters were battling a tyre recycling plant blaze today that sent huge toxic plumes of smoke 5,000 feet into the air.

About 1000 tonnes of tyres caught fire in Sherburn-in-Elmet, North Yorks this morning.


A spokeswoman for the Yorkshire Ambulance Service said a clinical supervisor and a Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) officer had been sent to the scene as a precautionary measure and local residents had been advised to keep doors and windows closed.

Twelve schools and a children’s centre were to keep staff and pupils inside, a North Yorkshire County Council spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for the Advance Flight Training School, based at Sherburn Airfield, which shares a boundary with the tyre recycling plant, said: “It’s very thick and smoky, and I can tell you from first hand experience it goes up to 5,000 feet and stretches about 25 miles to the north.”

The pilot said North Yorkshire Fire Service had told the club the fire may take days to extinguish.

The fire is visible from space - a NASA satellite captured an image of a grey plume of smoke above the site.
Curled from The Mirror

1/16/2014