Dalton Mills blaze: Fire chiefs defend response to suspected arson attack at Keighley landmark – Yorkshire Post Letters

IN response to recent correspondence about our response to the fire at Dalton Mills, Keighley, on March 3 2022; the initial fire crews were mobilised to the incident at 12.03hrs. Calls came into the control room with reports of ‘‘light smoke’’ issuing from the mill.

Keighley Dalton Mills blaze; questions for fire chiefs over response time to suspected arson – Yorkshire Post Letters

We initially mobilised three fire engines and an aerial appliance. The first appliance arrived after a couple of minutes followed by two more appliances within the next nine minutes.

Three fire appliances were on scene within 11 minutes of being mobilised. All the response times of the initial attendance are in keeping with our planning assumptions.

A fourth appliance was also mobilised by control when they received a further call by a member of the public. This appliance attended at 12.28 hrs.

Old buildings such as Dalton Mills can present many hazards for firefighters as quite often, they can be in a state of disrepair; the floors and walls may be weakened and unsafe.

Dalton Mill was known to have unsafe floors and therefore the initial commanders focused on using external methods (ladder, aerial appliance) to view inside the upper floors of the building.

The challenges that the initial crews were faced with, apart from the state of the building, were that they only observed ‘‘light smoke’’ and there were no real obvious signs of a fire.

The initial crews had been in attendance for an hour, searching the building using thermal image cameras before the fire started to show itself and at that point, further resources were requested. The fire investigation team has confirmed that the wooden, oil-soaked flooring will have accelerated the fire spread.

The incident commander requested 20 firefighting appliances to deal with a fire of this scale, along with the difficulty of acquiring a sufficient water supply. Further resources arrived quickly and within expected timescales.

We were able to protect surrounding businesses and houses from the fire to which we have received many messages of thanks. The police are treating the incident as arson and five people have been questioned about the incident.

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today. Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app, receive exclusive members-only offers and access to all premium content and columns. Click here to subscribe.