Claims in last Sunday’s Observer that a fire at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston was “out of control” have been dismissed by Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
The newspaper says the scale of the blaze was much bigger than previously acknowledged, that crews fought the fire for almost nine hours, and that a high volume pump – first requested at 10.50pm – eventually had to be supplied from London after neighbouring counties were unable to help.
The report adds that by 4.00am – seven hours after the fire started – Berkshire fire service told neighbouring services in Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire that they were unable to provide any mutual aid because of the incident. In addition, only one pump was available to tackle any fires across the whole of the Reading area. The newspaper also claims that when support arrived from neighbouring fire services, vehicles were temporarily prevented from entering the site by security officials.
The Observer based its story on a detailed fire service log of the incident, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on the website of the Nuclear Information Service, aan organisation which aims to raise awareness on nuclear disarmament and related safety issues.
Nothing like that
Berkshire’s deputy chief fire officer, Olaf Baars, responded: “The incident that we actually attended was nothing like the scenario described in the article.
“The claims that firefighters lost control are incorrect. The reporter also states that three miles of hose were in use. He may have been referring to the specialist high volume pumping unit from London, which is able to carry up to three miles of hose. This was not in fact required at the AWE incident, although the hose would, of course, have been made ready.
“The report contains a number of other inaccuracies, for example, regarding the reference to the use of defensive mode. Defensive firefighting does not mean, as the report alleges, that firefighters are unable to contain a fire but rather that they are not committing firefighters into a building at that point. In this case it was decided to allow the building involved to burn due to the risk involved.
“We did inform our neighbouring fire and rescue services that we would be unable to offer mutual aid for a period of time. This is routine procedure when a number of appliances are at an incident. There was still a fire appliance on duty in Reading and, as is usual practice, this would have been backed up with appliances from surrounding stations if necessary.”
He added that eight pumping appliances and supporting vehicles attended the incident, but the majority of them were not used and were there in case the fire spread to adjacent buildings.
In a statement, AWE said the Observer article contained a number of inaccuracies. "AWE took extremely prompt action to deal with the incident, following standard procedures agreed with safety regulators and the emergency services.
"The Observer is not correct to describe the fire as "major". The fire was relatively small, confined to a single process building and was out within four hours. Fire crew stayed on the scene, as is routine, to monitor the situation."
Previous fires
Earlier this month defence minister Peter Luff said in a House of Commons written answer that at the height of the incident, 95 firefighters and 20 appliances were at the scene. He also revealed that since 2006, there had been four incidents at the Atomic Weapons Establishment where Berkshire fire crews have been called, and three others where they have been on standby while AWE’s own fire service attended.
The previous incidents include a fire in timber cladding and wall insulation caused by welding in 2009, smoke coming from high voltage equipment, a vehicle fire, and a small fire in a container during decommissioning operations – all during 2006.
