57 day long fire in Swindon 'could have been prevented'
A devastating fire which burned for 57 days at an industrial waste site illegally managed in Swindon could have been prevented with better co-operation between public bodies- notably Swindon Borough Council and the Environment Agency.
That’s the conclusion of the final report of Swindon Borough Council’s scrutiny committee task group into the Averies fire which broke out at a scrap and recycling site run by the Averies brothers in Marshgate near the Greenbridge Retail park.
The fire started on July 21, 2014 and firefighters were onsite until September 16. The nearly two-months long blaze was the longest fire in the history of Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service.
After the fire, the borough council’s scrutiny committee set up a group too look at how all the relevant local agencies had responded to the emergency.
It made an interim report in 2015 but wanted to wait until criminal proceedings against the Averies had concluded before issuing a final report, which has now been published.
It says: “The Averies fire was preventable and avoidable if timely action had been taken and enforcement was effective.
Opportunities were not taken to reduce the volume of waste / scrap stored on site that could have reduced the risk.”
The report says the problem, that too much waste was being stored illegally without proper control had been noticed – but nothing had been done: “The overloading of the site was observable in the previous year (and was reported) but this did not result in change. A previous small fire on the site could have led to improvements and reduction of risk, as the site overloading was observable.
“It may not have been apparent what was buried below the overloaded site, however corrective action may have exposed the potential fire source.”
The report says the group was concerned that action may not have been taken because it would have cost too much – but said the fire then increased the costs on all the public bodies involved;: “Costs appeared to be the prominent factor at the time, rather than public safety being the priority, but acknowledged that extraordinary costs had arisen out of the failures to control the circumstances and adhere to permissions.
“Basic health and safety failures were observable and only led to improvement requirements over time, whereas the evidence provided demonstrated a need for immediate improvement.
“Most of the agencies involved at the time had various powers to deal with incidents like this, but none has the duty to prevent it from happening again. The relationship between the agencies did also not appear to be one of cooperation, but of hierarchy – and this appeared to be a system failure at the time.
“When responding to the fire there were problems with inconsistent representation at meetings, and the lack of delegated authority to act at meetings when decisions needed to be made frustrated the response and delayed some action and extinction of the fire.”