HUGE PETROL BLAZE

Grey River Argus, 12 September 1944, Page 8

HUGE PETROL BLAZE

FOLLOWS enemy air raids in T BRITAIN. t> ... Lo NDON, September 3. Britl sh Home Office has revealect one of the most spectacular and fires ever known to Britain, which started when an aviation petrol stqretank buried in a hillside was fractured during an enemy air laid. A great wave of burning petrol shot across half-a-mile of the countryside. lhe torrent, flowing about one thousand feet a minute, then came down the hillside into a valley and round its way into a stream and threatened a nearby village from which the inhabitants were evacuattd. Members of the National Fire Service, facing deadly risks, fougnt the blaze for twenty-one hours, and saved the village by damming the stream with the aid of a bulldozer, and then attacked the river of burning petrol, with foam. The petrol, seeping through the surface of the hillside, formed pockets of oil, sometimes considerable distances away. The heat caused the pockets of oil to explode, sending whirlwinds of flame capped by black smoke, sixty or seventy feet into the air. The tire three times appeared to be put out, but the heat caused the petrol in he sodden ground to vapourise, resuling in a big “flash-back,” setting the whole area ablaze again. The “flashbacks” had great destructive power destroying anything in their path.