RIVER OF FLAME

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 56, 4 September 1944, Page 3

RIVER OF FLAME

OIL BLAZE IN BRITAIN

| Rec. 1 p.m LONDON, Sept. 3. The story has just been released of ; one of the.most spectacular and terrijfying fires ever known in Britain. The Home Office states that the fire started when aviation petrol in a store tank buried in a hillside was fractured [during an enemy air raid. A great ; wave of burning petrol shot across half-a-mile of countryside, the torrent flowing about 1000 feet a minute. It .then came down the hillside into a valley, found its way into a stream, and threatened a nearby village from which -its-inhabitants and their'posses- | sions were evacuated. Members of the National? Fire Service, facing deadly risks, fought the blaze for 21 hours and saved the village by damming the stream with the aid oi a bulldozer. Then they attacked the river of burning petrol with ioam. j Petrol, seeping through the surface of the hillside, formed pockets of oil which. were sometimes ' considerable distances away. The heat ' 'caused the pockets of oil to explode, sending whirlwinds of flame-capped black smoke 60 or 70 feet into the air. Three times the fire appeared to have been put out, but the heat caused the petrol in the sodden ground to vapourise, resulting in a big "flashback" and setting the whole area ablaze ae;ain. The "flashbacks" had great destructive power, destroying anything in their path.