Saturday was spent with Catherine and the girls, in the morning, we all went around to a friend’s house to put their Guinea Pigs out in a run in the garden, then went shopping in Cambridge, for new items for the house, and in the afternoon, returning for lunch and chatting.
Later I was amused to find the girls had a wooden version of Towers of Hanoi, so I challenged Holly and Poppy to see how they fared against the same puzzle as an iPad App – it turned out it was a dead heat, which is praise indeed for both the software company and the Apple iPad!
In the evening one of them spotted smoke rising from the direction we were due to go for a cycle ride, and we soon arrived to see one building on the nearby industrial estate well ablaze and beyond the perimeter hedge we could see the Fire Brigade had arrived. We stopped to watch and since I had my camera I began shooting a record of the event,
Although at one point we thought they might have begun to bring the fire under control, it soon became evident that was far from the case, and we soon heard gas cylinders exploding, and the flames broke through the roof. Black pall of smoke rose up and then across the fields fortunately away from both the industrial and residential areas. As we watched the doors of what we presumed was the delivery bay either collapsed or melted and from within we could see flames that were filling that area from floor to roof. Later flames came through another area to the left along the front and later still spread further along the building, and broke out through the roof to the left of the starting point.
Up till that time firefighters were spraying from ground level, but as more and more units arrived on the scene and the earlier vehicles left to replenish their foam or water, two firefighters appeared on a ladder to bring their hoses to bear from above. I think this could only have been possible because there was only a light breeze and it was blowing away from them consistently. On our return we learnt that neighbours were due to have friends around for Dinner, but that their unit was in the buildings ablaze and were tragically going to have to cancel. I don't think many can realise just what such a fire can mean – not only will the premises be lost, along with product, but also paperwork and computers and everything that any company may have accumulated such as furniture, tools and furnishings. And the livelihoods of both the owners and their staff members. Tragedy is not too strong a word.
