South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue received a call to Sheffield Ski Village in the early hours of Sunday morning, 29th April. The Alpine-style wooden reception centre – which had function rooms, ski hire and bowling alley – were engulfed in flames. No-one was in the building at the time and there were no injuries. 5 fire engines and 25 firefighters attended the blaze from 6 local fire stations: Central, Rivelin, Darnall, Elm Lane, Tankersley and Lowedges. Police are now conducting a joint enquiry with the fire service into the cause of the blaze. In March 2011 the adventure playground at the village was destroyed after a suspected arson attack.
Incident Commander Stewart Nicholson said a 6 am: “We suspect that acetylene cylinders are inside the building but we have not yet confirmed if we have been able to put water on the cylinders. We are pumping around 3,000 litres of water per minute onto the fire from the River Don and have all but extinguished the flames. There is very little remaining of the building. It could be a further 24 hours before we can get closer to the site because of the risk of the cylinders being involved in the fire”.
Fortunately, due to the location of the site, there were no residential properties near enough to be affected by the fire.
For more local news on this incident see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-17887316 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-17891042
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/sheffield-ski-blaze-newlyweds-venue-joy-1- 4509162