Chinese lantern to blame for Birmingham fire

A CHINESE lantern is thought to have caused a massive fire in Birmingham after igniting 100,000 tonnes of plastic recycling material and a nearby factory unit.

Smoke billows from the site, 12 hours after the fire started. Picture: Getty

More than 200 firefighters were drafted in to contain what was described as the largest blaze in the West Midlands. It caused £6 million of damage and produced a smoke plume that rose 6,000ft.

Investigators have established a Chinese lantern – captured on CCTV falling on to the site – was to blame.

Vijith Randeniya, then local chief fire officer, said: “My forensics people have been here from the start and have reviewed CCTV and spoken to people and looked at the way the fire started and, looking at the CCTV evidence, you can see a Chinese lantern floating gently, and then land and then eight minutes later you see the fire start.”

He said the Chief Fire Officers Association had previously called for a review of the use of Chinese lanterns and said it was time that “sensible people have a sensible discussion” about the issue.

“We don’t want to be party poopers and we know they are used in a lot of celebrations,” he said. “Clearly there is a cause and an effect. We have a situation where a fire has started here, £6m worth of loss, started by one of these lanterns, and that was eminently preventable.”

He said fire crews were expected to be on the site until at least today, but were having to use plant machinery to “break up” the bales of plastic to get at the heart of the fire. One of the problems facing firefighters was having to extinguish molten pools of melted plastic, he said.

The fire was reported at 11pm on Sunday night and at its height sent a plume of smoke 6,000ft into the sky.

Although the smoke was of no danger to the public, residents were asked to keep their doors and windows shut.