A gas risk assessment was carried out for passing trains. Residents were given no advice

On 19 October 2024 a fire broke out at the AGC Chemicals Europe plant on the Hillhouse site in Thornton-Cleveleys. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service recorded it as incident 2410007359. Six pumps attended. Appliances were on site from 16:58 that day until 09:50 the following morning.

We asked the Service for its full incident record, and among other things whether any advice was issued to residents. It answered on 2 September 2026 and released the narrative log, which is the control room’s contemporaneous record of the evening, timed to the second.

This article is about one sequence in that log, and one sentence in the covering answer.

The question that was asked

At 17:59:25, British Transport Police contacted the fire service. The log records:

“BY ESICTRL FROM BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE - THIS LOCATION ON THEIR MAPS SHOWS CLOSE TO RAILWAY - IS THERE ANY RISK OF TOXIC GASSES TO TRAINS PASSING - ADVISED CRO WILL CONTACT CREW TO ADVISE”

Three minutes and ten seconds later, at 18:02:35, the crews answered:

“CONFIRM DUE TO THE WIND DIRECTION AND MINIMAL AMOUNT OF SMOKE THERE IS NO CURRENT RISK TO PASSING TRAINS AT THIS TIME”

At 18:04:51 the answer went back:

“BY RADIO TO BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE - INFORMED OF RESPONSE FROM CREWS - ACK”

A toxic gas risk assessment was requested, carried out on the basis of wind direction and smoke, and reported back to the body that asked for it, in five minutes and twenty-six seconds.

The question that was not asked

We had asked the Service what advice was given to residents and businesses. Its answer was:

“No advice was given at the time of the incident to residents or businesses as it did not meet the call out parameters of the media liaison officer.”

We are placing those two things side by side and adding nothing to them.

What was in the gas

The same log records, at 18:04:43, what the crews reported was involved:

“APPROX 200 METRE CUBED OF TFE PLANT PROCESSING GAS WHICH CONTAINS PERFLUOROISOBUTYLENE PFIB - LEAK NOW ISOLATED.”

Perfluoroisobutylene, usually written PFIB, is a decomposition product associated with fluoropolymer manufacture. That entry records what the fire service was told and reported at 18:04 on the night. It is not an independent measurement, and the volume is one of several figures that appear across the documents.

AGC’s own statutory notification describes it differently. In its Schedule 5 Part A form, submitted to the Environment Agency within 24 hours of the incident and disclosed to us separately, the operator listed the substances potentially released as “Smoke, AGCCE process gas (TFE, Hexafluoropropene, Chlorodifluoromethane)”, with the best estimate of quantity given as “TBC”. That notification does not mention PFIB.

We are not drawing a conclusion from that difference. We are recording that the operator’s statutory notification and the fire service’s contemporaneous log describe the same release differently.

The Environment Agency was told, and the records match

At 18:06:53 the log records “CRO RINGING ENVIRONMENT AGENCY”. Ten minutes later, at 18:16:58:

“BY PHONE ENVIRONMENT AGENCY LN 2315524. THIS IS BEING PASSED TO ENVIRONMENT OFFICER EMDO.”

2315524 is the Environment Agency’s own incident number for this fire, and it appears on the record the Agency disclosed to us separately, in answer to a different request to a different body. The two sets of documents corroborate each other by reference. The Agency was notified within about twenty minutes of the release being reported.

The Agency did not attend. Its stated reason, on its own record, is “no attendance requested, no added benefit we could add versus risk of site attendance”.

What is not confirmed in the available documents

Which railway. No disclosed document identifies the line British Transport Police were referring to. Their message says only that the location appeared close to a railway on their maps. We are not going to assume which line that was, or whether it was carrying traffic that evening. We have asked.

How the media liaison threshold works. The phrase “media liaison officer” does not appear anywhere in the operational record disclosed to us. We searched the five-page narrative log, the incident report and the two further documents for that phrase and for “media”, “press” and “liaison”. It appears only in the Service’s written answer to our request. What the call out parameters are, who applied them, and at what point, is not recorded in the material we hold.

Whether the statutory warning arrangements were engaged at all. Fire and rescue services are Category 1 responders under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which requires them to maintain arrangements to warn, inform and advise the public in an emergency. Local Resilience Forums designate which responder leads on that for each identified risk. Nothing in the disclosed record shows whether those arrangements were considered on the night, or who held the lead for this site. That is not the same as showing they were not.

Sourcing. The narrative log was disclosed as scanned images and had to be read by optical character recognition, which introduced errors. Page 3, which carries every quotation above, has been checked against the page image by eye and the errors corrected. Pages 1, 4 and 5 have not been checked that way, and nothing in this article is quoted from them.

What would answer this

We are preparing a further request to Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service asking for the call out parameters themselves as they stood on 19 October 2024, for any record of warning or informing the public being considered in relation to this incident, for the Service’s Civil Contingencies Act arrangements, and for the lead responder designation for this site. It asks for documents, not explanations, and it invites the Service to confirm plainly where no record is held.

We will publish what comes back, whatever it says.