East Devon farmers used tractors to spread slurry and plough fire breaks to stop flames from a solar farm blaze reaching a cottage. The fire broke out at a solar farm in Broadclyst on Monday morning, August 24.
Organic farmer Ed Rhodes, aged 60, from Martinsfield Farm in Broadclyst, spotted smoke on the other side of the village and went to investigate. When he found the blaze in a stubble field of solar panels, he went home to get his tractor and joined other local farmers in containing the fire. Firefighters from across Devon also fought the flames.
Rhodes said he had just finished irrigating leeks when he saw the smoke. "I looked up and saw smoke blowing up, blowing this way, and thought 'surely nobody has lit a bonfire'. I thought I would go and check it out. I wanted to make sure it wasn't our ground and make sure it wasn't anything happening."
He checked his own land, found no fire, and then saw concerned residents in the road who told him about the blaze in a nearby field. The fire service received multiple calls about a fire spreading rapidly under the solar panels.
The flames are believed to have started from beneath an inverter, solar equipment used to export energy to the grid.
Rhodes knew his tractor had a plough attached, so he turned home to get it. "I had the plough on the back of my tractor at home. By the time I had looped around I could see a line of flames. By the time I had got back Ed Pring, another farmer, had arrived. He had a tractor with a tanker on the back. I dropped the plough down in the ground. All I did was plough a fire break. There were more flames as I was going around. It was going towards the edge of the garden of a cottage."
He added: "If it had happened in the middle of the night, it was heading in the village direction."
Rhodes spent about ten minutes ploughing a fire break around the field. Edward Pring, a farmer from Broadclyst, and two other nearby agricultural workers spread slurry and water from tankers onto the field to help stop the blaze. The fire spread to two areas of the stubble field.
East Devon Farmers Help to Stop Solar Blaze Reaching Cottage