IT TOOK firefighters more than eight hours to contain and extinguish a fire at a local grain silo on Monday afternoon.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
More than a dozen firefighters were deployed to the high-risk incident at a grain storage business on Trucking Yards Lane at Wee Waa about 2.30pm.
It came after triple zero call to reports of smoke billowing from the top of six joined concrete silos which were storing barley grain.
Fire and Rescue crews from Wee Waa and Narrabri, backed by a Hazmat crew, the Tamworth commander, and the RFS, were deployed and found smoke issuing from the bucket elevator at the top.
READ ALSO:
A spokesperson for Fire and Rescue NSW said because of the high-risk nature of the fire near the silo storage, "as a precaution, firefighters established exclusion zones around the site, evacuated staff from a nearby cotton plant and closed the train line running through the area".
"Due to the difficult nature of the fire, firefighters from both Fire and Rescue NSW and the NSW Rural Fire Service worked for over three hours to contain the fire preventing further spread," the spokesperson confirmed.
Paramedics were also called to keep an eye on crews who rotated for several hours throughout the operation to climb 28 flights of stairs to the top to douse the blaze, in the heat.
After eight hours, the site was declared safe and exclusion zone taken down about 10.30pm.