• Useful advice about stacked straw from Norfolk Fire & Rescue

    The following useful information is from Derek Sim from Norfolk Fire and Rescue:

    Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service is located with Norfolk Police in a joint headquarters in Wymondham. This allows both teams to share vital information and support our rural communities in driving down crime and arson.

    In any one year, Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service attends between 200 and 500 incidents related to farms. These can include out of control bonfires to large acreages of standing crop. Some of the smaller incidents may not even involve the Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service because the landowner is able to deal with it. However, even small incidents can quickly grow and become a danger to both farm staff and livestock.

    In this edition, I want to look specifically at stacked straw. With the increasing value of stacks of straw, many growers have now decided to bale and store rather than chop and cultivate back into the soil. If you are a livestock farmer or waiting for companies to pick up the straw for power stations, etc, most of you will now be well into your stock. This means that the distance between the stacks may have increased beyond the recommended 10 metres. The advice is to keep that larger distance where and when possible. My advice is also to calculate the predominate wind direction and avoid lining up the stacks in that direction, as it will only help to spread any hot ash or embers.

    For many of you, moving the stack may not be possible or practical this late into the season due to wet ground or lack of space so we need to look for alternatives. So, keep the areas around the stack under control, manage any litter and make sure all machinery is parked or stored well away. If the straw is in a building along with other ignition sources, can it be separated via compartmentation?

    A good regime for you to follow includes checking outbuildings and padlocks regularly and reporting any unwanted activity from staff to the employers, and also to the police’s rural crime team. It may seem like low level crime to individual businesses but when included with other low-level incidents, it could form part of a bigger picture so share the information.

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