Fire crews faced a “challenging” blaze as they worked quickly together to prevent the fire spreading to a historic paper mill, the assistant chief fire officer has said.
Simon Tuhill, who overlooked crews from Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue as they were called to the “tragic” fire at Frogmore Paper Mill on Saturday (January 22), has praised the rapid response after suggesting the “extensive damage” from the fire could have been much worse.
Speaking to the Observer, he explained that he was “incredibly proud” by the early response team and said: “It was a really challenging incident for them, because it’s a working paper mill, it’s on an island. There is a stream either side of the building which would have supplied the water mills back in the day.”
Some members of the fire crew that responded to the scene. Credit: Aperture Northampton News Team
Mr Tuhill stated that the location of the paper mill made it difficult to transport the equipment to deal with the fire, as they slowly had to bring things across the two bridges.
He added: “The construction of the building, it has a pitched roof and the smoke was gathering at the roof, which made it really hard to see where the fire actually was.”
Frogmore paper mill fire 💔 #frogmorepapermill #papermillfire #frogmorepapermillfire https://t.co/lTNecvGF80 pic.twitter.com/aXuaaKhSPR
— FutureBleeps (@FutureBleeps) January 22, 2022
Credit: Aperture Northampton News Team
The team quickly identified there were no people inside the building, and it then became a “tactical priority” to stop the fire spreading from the modern visiting centre to the older parts of the building.
While there were extensive damages to the mill’s visitor centre, the more historical building of the site, which homes the oldest mechanical paper mill in the world, appeared to be protected.
Mr Tuhill explained that things could have ended much worse and said: “These sort of buildings and these sort of contents can sometimes become really challenging to extinguish, the nature of the build – the fire can spread in areas we can’t see and fires can then spread in other parts of the buildings.”
Credit: Aperture Northampton News Team
But by the time he arrived at the scene, he noted the early response team had a good initiative and called for more resources straight away, resulting in ten fire engines and around 50 firefighters.
“We were really conscious in trying to salvage as many of their displays and artifacts as we could,” the assistant chief officer added.
Well done to all the crews at yesterdays large fire in Frogmore Paper Mill in #HemelHempstead. They worked incredibly hard to save as much of the building and it’s historic contents as possible. pic.twitter.com/S9zS1SNFUF
— Simon Tuhill (@HFRS_ACFO) January 23, 2022
Mr Tuhill was thankful for the amounts of praise the fire service received by both the mill owners and the public, but added: “I really feel their (the owner’s) pain in terms of what happened to the mill and how it’s going to affect their business.”
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by police on suspicion of arson.
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