Near miss for thousands of partridges near barn fire

Several thousand French partridges escaped certain death in an early morning battle to keep flames from their sheds near Sible Hedingham, Essex.

In the early hours of Friday 27 June, firefighters were called to tackle a blaze in a barn containing wood-flooring materials, with three poultry sheds nearby. The fire caused the collapse of one of these sheds, but fortunately it was empty.

See also: 6.000 hens die in Devon farm shed fire

“The good news is that no French partridges were hurt as a result of this fire,” said sub-officer Darren Hockley, from Wethersfield Fire Station. “The storage shed on fire contained wooden flooring and two large propane cylinders. Close by there were thousands of partridges in a second shed, and the crews worked extremely hard to prevent the fire from spreading.

“If the fire had reached the partridge shed I have no doubt they would have all died, the crew’s done an excellent job containing the fire to save the birds.”

Officers arrived at the scene at about 2.30am. It took several hours to put the fire out.