Devastating News

[What?]

From the Beeb...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3114410.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/photo_gallery/3115618.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/3116182.stm

[marty]

yes it was on cnn too. unbelievably sad. you can just imagine the heat from tyres/oils/fuel would have made it impossible to put out.
imagine Southwards in Paraparaumu going up like that.

[Antallica]

:gob: :argh:

Man I hope there weren't any 'only one of it's kind' cycle in there. That's bloody terrible! :angry2:

[SpankMe]

ahhh SHIT :( :argh: :argh: :argh:

[merv]

No mention of fire protection systems such as sprinklers. I think its something the Poms are a bit slack on as happened at the Hinkley Triumph fire. They need Vesda early warning smoke detection and sprinklers in places with such rare collections.

[What?]

Yeah, bloody unbelievable, apparently no fire protection. Unfortunately, just like my garage. Fortunately I don't smoke...

[Coldkiwi]

thats pretty dopey ain't it? a huge irreplacable collection of potentially flammable items and they don't have fire protection. tragic but didn't need to be so extensive

[RiceBurner]

The fire was started by a cigarette that somehow got into a box of old air-conditioning filters out the back.

The biggest losses are the race bikes - any magnesium that got caught in it burnt up - so that's most race crankcases. :(

My father knows the Rhodes family (racing Velocette restorers) and one of them went up there after the fire and saw the devastation for himself.



Goodish news is that most of the more normal bikes are probably restorable, the only stuff that's flammable is the paint and the tyres.


FWIW there were apparantly shed loads of extinguishers all over the place - but because it started outside and got straight onto the roof they weren't much use.

I doubt sprinklers would have helped that much either. I think most of the damage to the bikes will be from the roof debris falling on them.