B A F S A F O C U S M AY 2 0 2 2
on 6 th september 1993 a fire occurred at a poultry processing factory in Hereford owned by Sun Valley Poultry, which was at the time the largest employer in the county. Tragically, during firefighting operations, two firefighters, Leading firefighter John Davies and firefighter David Morris, lost their lives.
Nearly three decades later, have all lessons been learnt? ASKS IAN GOUGH, TECHNICAL ADVISER, BAFSA
in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy much has been written and spoken about the fire risks posed by modern methods of construction and, in particular, combustible building panels. However, the many warning signs of problems associated with ‘sandwich’ panels (sometimes known as LISPS i.e., Large Insulated Sandwich Panels) and their behaviour in fires were there to see a long time ago in both residential and commercial buildings. Two particularly notable fires being the Sun Valley Poultry factory fire and the Atherstone Food Processing plant fire.
6 | BAFSA .ORG.UK
Interestingly, a closer study of many of these fires reveals that not all of the problems could be specifically related purely to combustible core panels, but it was this feature where the majority of attention was certainly focussed; other issues were either missed or deliberately ignored. A chance meeting and conversation with a now retired fire officer who, coincidentally like me, began his career as a fireman at the same fire station in the West Midlands, revealed that having subsequently moved to rural Herefordshire on his transfer to the Hereford and Worcester Fire Brigade, he had attended the Sun Valley factory fire.
