Smoke fills Medway's sky as crews battle business park fire

KentOnline / KMTV

Firefighters were on the ground since 6am, and managed to contain the burning plastic at the Medway City Estate's Viridor Recycling Centre.  Finn Macdiarmid reports.

Transcript

00:00All across Medway this morning, many woke up to plumes of thick black smoke covering

00:05the sky that could be spotted from as far away as Canterbury.

00:09Fire crews were on the scene from 6 in the morning and soon discovered the source, a

00:12plastic disposal area at the Viridore Recycling Centre in Medway City Estate Business Park.

00:18The cause of the fire isn't yet known, but even at its peak, when it was blocking out

00:22the sun in parts of the estate, nearby companies said it was mostly business as usual.

00:27At first, it was panic. Around 6am, one of my members of staff, one of my coaches, messaged

00:33me a video of loads of black smoke coming from Medway City Estate. So the atmosphere is a

00:40little bit more different than normal. It's very quiet at this part of the estate. It

00:44seemed a lot of panic getting in, whether we could get in and out of the estate right,

00:48but business as usual at the moment, so it hasn't been too traumatic for the business,

00:52getting people in and out of the gym.

00:54Even commuters travelling on nearby motorways spotted the smoke.

00:57Yeah, so I was taking my missus to work this morning, driving up the M25. As I was coming

01:02out of Gillingham where I live, literally just down the road, we see the smoke just across

01:08from where Dockside is. We were driving through past the Medway Tunnel, looked to the left hand

01:13side and you can just see this big smoke just erupting. Yeah, I decided to drive down to Medway

01:17City Estate to see what was actually going on. I was able to walk onto the site. All the workers

01:23are just sat there with, well, nothing to do I'm assuming. And you can still see the

01:28fire coming out of the concrete square where it's coming from.

01:31Hours later, the fire was almost fully extinguished, with the pillar of thick black smoke getting

01:36smaller and lighter.

01:37Now even though the fire has been greatly diminished, you can see it is still burning. There are still

01:43fire crews and Kent Fire and Rescue Service are saying that people still need to stay safe

01:48and cautious.

01:49OK, so approximately 6am this morning, crews were called to report of a fire within the

01:54recycling centre behind me. They were met with quite a severe, well-established fire.

02:00At the height of the incident, we had six fire engines and a hype vehicle at a tent. That's

02:04currently now sitting at four fire engines and a hype vehicle. We have surrounded the fire,

02:09it's very much under control now. We are continuing to work with on-site staff to break up the stack

02:15and extinguish the fire.

02:17Now that the fire has almost been extinguished thanks to the efforts of the emergency services,

02:21Medway's skies have returned to a nice clear blue.

02:24Finn McDermid for KMTV

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