{"id":150824,"date":"2026-07-31T11:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/150824\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T11:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:44:08","slug":"fifty-firefighters-tackle-blaze-at-beauty-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/150824\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty firefighters tackle blaze at beauty spot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">About 50 firefighters are battling a blaze on Ministry of Defence land near Colchester.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Middlewick Ranges on Mersea Road is also used by local people. It is home to nightingales and other wildlife.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Essex County Fire and Rescue Service has asked the public to avoid the area so crews can park fire engines near hydrants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">At 11:45 BST, a spokesperson said the blaze was &#8220;surrounded&#8221;, adding: &#8220;Firefighters are working well extinguishing the fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Mike Lilley, a Labour city councillor, said: &#8220;Residents are getting hoses and buckets of sand ready to protect our homes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"A bird's eye drone view of fields, trees and houses. In the background white smoke billows into the sky. The sky is blue.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/bbc_us_articles_995\/1cbab60273e4f9205090fd888c266554.webp\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The white smoke has been seen from several miles away around the city [Liam Winters]<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"A red and yellow fire engine is parked up on a dirt track, with dry brown grass either side. In the background is white smoke billowing.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/bbc_us_articles_995\/e0e2910cf451ece6f5db70dd06b4db0d.webp\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Resident Aimee Keteca, 41, said: &#8220;It looks pretty serious, the black smoke is substantial.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">John Hood saw smoke billowing &#8220;hundreds and hundreds of feet up in the air&#8221; from where he was at Colchester United&#8217;s football stadium 3.7 miles (6km) away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Brian Gilbert told BBC Essex presenter Ben Fryer that he could see it from where he was at Abberton Reservoir<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;It looks very, very big,&#8221; said the 68-year-old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Do you have a story suggestion for Essex? Contact us below.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Follow Essex news on <a data-ylk=\"slk:BBC Sounds;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/curation\/p0cjdqpb?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">BBC Sounds<\/a>, <a data-ylk=\"slk:Facebook;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BBCEssex\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>, <a data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bbcessex\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a> and <a data-ylk=\"slk:X;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BBCessex\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Related internet links<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 50 firefighters are battling a blaze on Ministry of Defence land near Colchester. The Middlewick Ranges on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48681,17,6267,48680,2924,48682],"class_list":["post-150824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-brian-gilbert","tag-canada","tag-city-councillor","tag-essex-county-fire-and-rescue-service","tag-fire-engines","tag-mike-lilley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}