Dozens of firefighters have battled a devastating farm fire which engulfed 1,000 hay bales, with the farmer believing the blaze was started deliberately.
The fire began in a barn at Spurlings Farm, near Fareham, Hampshire on Wednesday night (16 January). Flames were visible from the M27.
Crews from five stations, totalling 35 firefighters, tackled the flames before spending the night damping down.
Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service said the cause of the fire was not yet known.
However, dairy farmer and chairman of Hampshire NFU, Andrew Malyon, believes the fire was started by arsonists.
He told Portsmouth News: “It was quite shocking to see the fire. We were lucky though, there were no animals in the barn and nobody was hurt.
“But it is not the first time that this has happened. We think it’s an arson. It’s annoying but there’s nothing we can do. It’s situated very close to the public, on a country road and not in the middle of a farm.”
The incident follows a Derbyshire farmer who described the perpetrator of a huge deliberate farm fire which destroyed more than 3,000 bales as “evil”.
A similar incident, which happened in East Lothian, left a farmer “considerably out of pocket” after a fire destroyed hay bales worth £30,000 last October.
NFU Mutual’s claims statistics reveal that the cost of farm fire claims rose by an alarming 26% to £44m in the last few years.
