Mark Howard, Waltet’s Managing Director, today praised Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service and the internal Waltet team for averting a serious crisis at the company’s Bunny Lane Waste and Recycling Centre, situated in Timsbury, just outside of Romsey.

On Friday evening, shortly after the site closed for the weekend, our security management company ADP alerted us to smoke coming from one of the wood piles detected by our thermal monitoring cameras; the Hampshire fire service were immediately called.

Within 30 minutes of the alarm being raised, our Waste Management Director, Andy Brown, was on site leading the efforts alongside Alan who set about isolating the burning wood to contain the fire and minimise the spread. Compliance Manager, Mark Middleton, monitored the cameras throughout the evening and provided important information and instructions to the team on the ground.

Fire crews attended from Alton, Eastleigh, Fareham, Fordingbridge, Hightown, Redbridge, Ringwood, Romsey, St Mary’s, and Yateley who used hose reel jets and main jets to tackle the blaze within 300 tonnes of building waste. On-site plant machinery was used by the Waltet team to turn over and move the waste.

The fire was contained quickly and left to burn itself out while being gradually extinguished through the evening, with a stop message issued at 2am. The waste that burnt totalled approximately 50 tonnes of wood and due to the quick actions of our fire service and team, there was no damage to our onsite plant or buildings and no danger to life, which was obviously our top priority and concern.

“I would like to thank the team including two of our night drivers who assisted until the early hours of Saturday morning, and a fantastic job done by our emergency services. As a precautionary measure we used our neighbour’s lake to top up our water stocks and the fire brigades bowsers, and I am grateful for our neighbour’s assistance in this urgent matter.  We will of course always look to learn lessons and further improve our excellent response times to the very rare emergency issues” concludes Mark Howard.