Six fire engines will race to Brighton’s Palace Pier tomorrow and cordon off half the boardwalk while responding to a fire alarm sounding.
How do I know? Well, it’s not because I’ve been speaking to the pier’s fortune teller. It’s because East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service have just issued a press release to tell us they’re doing a high level exercise there.
The exercise, which is planned for tomorrow evening, will mean that one side of the pier will be inaccessible to the public, although the other side will remain open.
Brighton and Hove Borough Commander Nigel Cusack said: “We are pleased to be working so closely with the owners of the pier to organise this exercise.
“We want to ensure we fully understand the challenges we might face if there was a real fire. We hope visitors and locals will appreciate that we will need to shut off certain areas for safety reasons while we carry out our emergency planning and training event.”
Pier fires are sadly very common, and when they happen they are often spectacular. A large part of Eastbourne Pier was destroyed in a blaze in 2014 and Hastings Pier was ravaged by a fire in 2010.
Southend Pier was also badly damaged in a fire in 2005, which was exacerbated when it was discovered that the water pipes running down the pier for use by the fire service were made of plastic and therefore melted.
And of course the West Pier caught fire twice in a matter of months 14 years ago. Although arson was suspected, no one has ever been caught.
