Crews battle difficult conditions to tackle heath fire

Firefighters have spent the night tackling a large heath fire at Caesar’s Camp near Church Crookham.

Crews were first alerted to the fire at 21:37 on Tuesday (1 February) with HIWFRS Fire Control receiving multiple calls about the incident.

Firefighters from Rushmoor, Fleet, Bordon, Hartley Wintney and Andover attended, along with a command support vehicle from Eastleigh.

Due to the difficult terrain, crews used Land Rovers to access the site and hose reel jets to put the fire out.

Windy conditions caused the fire to spread with around 1.5 kilometres of undergrowth affected.

But crews reported that good progress was being made and the fire was out just after 02:00.

Station Manager Dean Hodges said: “The crews could see the smoke from a distance and on arrival were faced with a potentially escalating incident and difficult terrain.

“There was quite a bit of wind and that meant the fire had the potential to spread quickly, but the crews worked really hard to get on top of it.

“We had an effective strategy in place and surrounded the fire quite quickly but there were a number of pockets of smouldering areas which is why we had resources there through the night.

“It’s unclear how the incident started and it would be very difficult to pinpoint a cause but incidents like these show that you have got to be careful because wildfires can occur at any time of year.”

Military personnel were also in attendance and helped move resources around.

The incident was scaled down in the early hours of this morning and the stop message was received at 07:28. Crews remain on scene to dampen down.