Firefighters evacuated Harlow shops after chemical reaction
The retail unit has since been made safe
Essex County Fire and Rescue Service firefighters evacuated shoppers from a shopping centre in Harlow yesterday (December 22), after a chemical reaction in the basement of one of the retail units.
They were called to the area in Terminus Street at 11:51am, and worked to make the scene safe by 2pm.
No one was injured during the incident.
Firefighters and police officers evacuated the shops as a precaution when crews reported chemicals had reacted.
Four crews attended, including from Cambridge, to assist ECFRS, as well as specially trained Detection Identification and Monitoring (DIM) officers being requested to monitor the chemical levels and to allow for assessing the level of threat to the public.
Station Manager Kev Jenner, Incident Commander: “It’s not just fires we deal with, we’re also trained to deal with chemical incidents. In this case, it was a chemical reaction and initial crews from Harlow worked really well to cordon off the scene and evacuate the shops, which we very busy in the run up to Christmas.
“We worked alongside police and ambulance colleagues to see how we can best keep people safe while we worked to measure the quantity of chemicals in the air. A big thank you to a colleague from Cambridge Fire and Rescue Service for helping us at the scene to monitor the chemicals.”