Huge fire at Spanish Grand Prix
Fire crews have been criticised for their ‘laid back’ response after a fire broke out in a garage at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The fire started around 90 minutes after the race had finished. Sir Frank Williams was giving a speech to team members when the thick black smoke was seen billowing from one of the garages. It is thought that the fire started in fuel area.
The blaze was tackled by Williams team personnel, with help from Caterham and Force India.
Bob Fearnley, Force India’s deputy principal was shocked at how badly the incident was dealt with. He said: “Incompetent would be a very polite way of saying what these people have done here today. There’s no training, no procedures. I went down to see how my man is, and I had to fight my way in. We need to look seriously at the training of people at the circuits. I’m not impressed at all.”
Mark Gillian, Williams chief operations engineer thanked all members of the rival teams for their help in trying to deal with the fire.
Gillian said: “On behalf of Williams, I’d like to thank all of the team members from other teams for their help during the fire. We were overwhelmed by the support. It was really impressive. Williams would like to say thanks to the teams, the FIA, FOM and all of those who came to help. It was a serious issue and I am very grateful indeed. What happened after a great result is very disappointing, but things were limited by the fast response of our team and everyone who helped.”
The fire left 31 team members needing medical attention. 7 people are still being treated in hospital.
The fire destroyed a huge amount of Williams equipment but Gillian said there is no doubt that they would be competing at the Moncao Grand Prix in around 2 weeks time.
Gillian added: “We had a lot of damage and we have lost a lot of equipment, including IT equipment. Over the next couple of days we will be looking at where we are parts-wise. We will have everything we need to run operationally at Monaco, but we may be missing a few of the extras because obviously we don’t carry a complete set of spares for everything.”