Author Topic: The marvellous Lickey Hills  (Read 39379 times)

JudithM

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Re: The marvellous Lickey Hills
« Reply #121 on: February 16, 2016, 01:12:35 PM »
There was an adjacent canal.  If I remember correctly, the fire engines that came were having difficulty trying to pump the water up from the canal though as there was a steep embankment and the water level was quite low.  It was a drought year and the whole lot went up like tinder, and all attempts to put it out were failing.  Thankfully, they managed to stop it before it crept across the park and into houses (although some houses - including the one where one of my school friends lived - were evacuated).

I lived a couple of streets away and the smoke was that dense that you couldn't see the houses over the road, friends of ours who were on their way back from holiday could see the orange glow for miles out & were wondering what on earth was going on!

Afterwards there was just this blackened land and the occasional tree where once dense woodland and a farm field had been.
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Terry B

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Re: The marvellous Lickey Hills
« Reply #122 on: February 18, 2016, 12:09:54 PM »
Judith,

It's sad to hear about such a devastating fire as that. Containing and extinguishing such a blaze is something that firefighters get very frustrated with as progress seems very slow at times. It's dangerous and exhausting work. They often have to create fire breaks to try and stop the spread of the fire.

As you pointed out, the supply of water is cruicial for such operations and not always available in the quantities required. We in the AFS used to practise 'water relaying' and I recall pumping water over a distance of three miles once. We did this by using many pumps along the way to keep the pressure up. In cities like Birmingham, they'd rely on hydrants, canals, rivers and pools. Sadly, not many of those are around in the Lickeys!

planetmalc

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Re: The marvellous Lickey Hills
« Reply #123 on: February 18, 2016, 04:37:19 PM »
Have I imagined this?:-
 
I vaguely recall   -   from the 40's or 50's   -   a property at the Lickey Hills tram terminus (but on the opposite side of the road and lying between the amusement arcade and the traffic roundabout at the bottom of the hill as you head out of Brum) whose somewhat elevated garden was visible from the pavement and which contained a large-scale model layout of some Birmingham trams, on a track which possibly had a working electric power overhead that made them move. :o
 
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