About The Fire

The fire at the vegetable packing house at Atherstone-on-Stour in Warwickshire was the worst loss of life in a single incident for the UK Fire Service since 1973 and resulted in the death of four firefighters.

The blaze started at around 5:30 pm on Friday 2nd November in an area used for storing packing materials and soon spread. The first (local) firefighting teams got into difficulties soon after arriving on the scene and, as the fire gained in intensity, at some stage there was a partial collapse of the entire building.

The incident was one of the largest to affect Warwickshire in recent years and resulted in over 200 firefighters tackling the fire from Warwickshire, Hereford and Worcester and West Midlands fire brigades. Over 26 appliances attended the scene together with numerous other emergency service and search and rescue vehicles which included specialist pumping equipment which was used to extract water from the river Stour.

The fire took over 24 hours to extinguish and the fire service used over 7 million litres of water in tackling it. The bodies of the firefighters who died were recovered from the scene on Tuesday 6th November, leaving a community numb with shock and profound grief.