ALMOST 40 years ago, a huge fire was seen in Milford Haven.

It came from the Amoco Refinery on August 30, 1983. A work firefighter spotted that oil storage tank number 11 had caught fire and it took a number of days to extinguish.

It was around 10.53am that the fire was spotted and Dyfed Fire Brigade was called. The tank contained more than 46,000 tonnes of North Sea crude oil.

According to www.fireservice.co.uk, the Refinery Fire Brigade was the first to respond and sent a 105-foot hydraulic platform with a 4,500-gallon capacity foam tender. Four works firefighters manned this and the response escalated as within three hours, 150 firefighters were manning 43 different appliances.

Hydrants had four lines of hoses running from them along with the foam line to help with extinguishing the fire. The hydraulic platform was set up in the south-east corner of the site, alongside the bund wall of the storage tank. They raised the bottom of the platform and foam was projected onto the top of the tank. At this point, it seemed that around half of the tank was engulfed in flames.

Those working to put the fire out assumed that the foam had sealed the tank as they had not seen it spread. Five pumps, an emergency tender and a control unit arrived at the scene from Dyfed Fire Brigade. When they arrived, they sent a message back to the control to say “large oil tank alight” and requesting 10 pumps.

Fire crews at the scene. Picture: Stephen Hughes via Our Pembrokeshire Memories

At 11.16am, the divisional officer arrived and called a message through to ask for 15 pumps. He followed this with a message that said the tank contained 56,000 gallons of crude oil and it was ‘well alight’ and 10 jets were being used.

He then requested a large-scale foam mobilising needed to be started and to ask other refineries to start their ‘mutual aid scheme.’ They increased the pumps to 20 and five hydraulic platforms.

The chief fire officer took over the management shortly after 1.30pm and communicated about a ‘massive cooling operation’ in force and they were waiting for special appliances from other refineries to arrive before starting a foam attack.

An hour and a half later and 26 pumps were at the scene with seven foam tankers and a number of other special appliances and 150 firefighters. The RAF even sent a foam tanker and some of its firefighters to assist.

The firefighters made the decision to draw oil from the tank as well as surrounding ones in the hope of containing the fire. They believed that the fire was consuming 300 tonnes of oil every hour. Nine hours later, the surrounding tanks were empty of oil and the process of replacing the oil with foam began.

45,000 gallons of foam arrived on the scene but the crews were faced with a problem – the commercial tankers carrying the foam had many different and non-standard couplings. Before they were able to transfer the foam to the tankers, they had to create adaptors from materials in the refinery.

It was decided by the refinery experts and senior fire officers that they would wait a few hours before launching the foam attack, however, shortly after midnight, a ‘boil over’ happened without warning which meant that thousands of tonnes of oil caught fire after flowing into the bund wall.

This meant the fire spread to cover around four acres. Many firefighters – all ran for cover – received burns to their hands and faces and other injuries while trying to escape the heat.

A number of appliances caught fire and a roll call found that all on site were accounted for. Many of the firefighters were then taken to hospital for treatment.

At this point, crews were being relieved with fresh firefighters but they faced the problem of having a lack of hose. What had been laid out ready had been melted, with a second hose bursting.

The new crews were warned that another ‘boil over’ could happen and at 2.20am, this took place and the crews were back to square one, as the new hose had been damaged.

The fire and thick smoke. Picture: Ivor Davies via Terry Davies on Our Pembrokeshire Memories

Firefighters quickly extinguished more fires that were starting to appear in the cladding of the surrounding tanks and half an hour after the second ‘boil over,’ a new hose and cooling jets were placed and put to work.

At 8am the following day, a full attack with 67,000 gallons of bulk foam was started. By early evening, the fire was under control and only small pockets of fire were remained in the tank.

The foam attack continued throughout the night, however, the foam blanket broke at around 2am on September 1, causing the fire to flare up. A mobile crane was used with more foam which then extinguished the fire, however, the crews kept up the application of the foam for several hours to ensure that it was out and the oil and metal of the tanks was cool enough that there would be no further risk.

At the time of the stop message at 10.30pm on September 1, 70 appliances remained at the scene and the control room was told that no further assistance was needed. Six firefighters were injured during the incident.

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