On Tuesday 17th April, airAlert was employed to give an early warning to residents of Southampton of a major fire in the western docks. The blaze caused significant amounts of smoke in the Freemantle area, in the centre of the city.

Residents were advised to stay indoors, and keep doors and windows closed. The free airAlert service normally supplies subscribers across Sussex and Hampshire with an advanced notification of elevated levels of pollution in the ambient air. This is the first time that airAlert has been used to support the emergency services to send out a public health warning.

Subsequent analysis has detected elevated PM10 and PM2.5, thought to be a result of the fire, at Southampton’s AURN urban background monitoring site, located close to the city centre between 10:00 and 16:00 on 17th April. PM10 concentrations peaked at 78 ug m-3, measured as an hourly mean and PM2.5 reached a maximum hourly mean concentration of 72 ug m-3. Elevated PM10¬ was detected slightly later at Southampton’s Bitterne Road monitoring site, starting around 13:00 and dropping off by 18:00. The maximum hourly mean measured at this site was very similar at 81 ug m-3. The elevated concentrations coincided with a period of westerly winds which would have blown smoke across the city of Southampton before reaching the Bitterne area, to the east.

Although the elevated PM10 was too short-lived to cause a breach of the daily mean Air Quality Strategy Objective at these locations, concentrations may have been higher in areas closer to the fire. It is hoped that rapidly alerting people to the risks, via airAlert, will have helped to protect the health of local residents.

The fire was reported to have died down as a result of efforts by firefighters, helped by wet and windy weather overnight on 17 / 18 April.

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Item date 18/04/2012