Explosions as Fire Crews Tackle North York Moors Fire

Unexploded ordinance on an old army range on the North York Moors has exploded as fire-fighters tackle a moorland blaze.

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service say the moorland fire near Fylingdales could continue to burn for several days.

Fire-fighters say that peat in the ground is now burning and giving off large quantities of smoke.

Ben Illsley from the fire service says the situation was further complicated yesterday when unexploded ordinance on an old army range exploded.

"The main operations on scene currently, we are surrounding the perimeter of the fire to contain further fire spread.

The current scene of operations include a helicopter, a drone and some specialist wildfire capabilities to respond to the incident.

There was a number of previously unexploded ordinance that exploded whilst on scene yesterday, so there was four previously unexploded ordinance went off yesterday where our crews were in attendance. 

As an abundance of caution, we've withdrawn the crews from working on the actual moorland, which does limit some of the techniques we would usually use for fire and rescue service operations. So we've adopted a more defensive and containment approach now from the perimeter and aerially from a helicopter, which went alive on scene this morning.

Ben says yesterday's incident with the exploding ordinance was an unusual experience for the fire crews.

"Very loud and concerning bangs were heard on the scene significant distance from our crew. So whilst it's obviously a scary occurrence they weren't that close to the incident. So we have removed them from working on that area of the moorland as a precaution viven the fact that there was three or four of them while we were on scene there yesterday, but all the firefighters are fit and well and weren't too close to there.

Up until yesterday afternoon, we had a number of our specialists, wildfire capabilities, our argocats, making really good progress on the Moorland. But as soon as we had the ordinance incident yesterday afternoon, the right thing to keep our crews safe was to withdraw them. So we are now fighting it more from the perimeter and aerial."

The public are being advised to avoid the area and residents nearby are being advised to close their windows and doors and avoid breathing in the smoke as much as possible. 

Ben Illsley says they expect the fire to burn for a number of days.

"The wind has changed direction a number of times over the last few days, so we have contained the fire at the perimeter on two sides, and the overall kind of area involved hasn't grown too much in the last two days.

It was however, declared a major incident given the number of resources we had to allocate to prevent that further fire spread.

Our advice to local residents is to avoid the area if possible.

There are no evacuation orders in place or anything like that. We do advise residents to close their windows and doors and avoid breathing in the smoke as much as possible.

There is still large amounts of smoke in that area. A lot of the ground that's involved in the fire is heavily peaty, so it does burn for considerable time.

So our expectations are that the fire will continue to burn for a number of days. There's less visible flame on scene today, but there is masses of energy within that peatland that will burn for a number of days now generating smoke to the area."

The changes in wind direction have bought some relief for the fire fighters who yesterday were battling to prevent the fire spreading any closer to RAF Fylingdales.

"Yesterday the wave of the wind direction, it was blowing the fire predominantly towards RAF Fylingdales, so there was an amazing amount of work by our firefighters and neighbouring partners from Humberside and Cleveland that managed to contain it to a perimeter road there.

So it hasn't spread at this point in time onto RAF Fylingdales, but obviously if it did, that creates a number of challenges as well. So that was down to great work by the crews yesterday. It didn't spread that way, and the wind is blowing in a different direction today.

So we have liaised with the RAF and the MOD throughout. We have some of their teams on scene now trying to help us understand if there is further risk of more ordinance in any of the areas and making sure that it's safe for our crews to operate in that area."

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