A question about toxic gas risk to passing trains was answered. Residents were given no advice
Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service has released its incident record for the fire at AGC Chemicals Europe on 19 October 2024. It shows a question about toxic gas risk to passing trains asked, answered and relayed back in five and a half minutes. The Service says no advice was given to residents or businesses that evening because it did not meet the call out parameters of the media liaison officer.
- Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, covering letter answering our information request, incident 2410007359, 2 September 2026, which carries the answer to Question 6 quoted here and the appliance list with arrival times, via WhatDoTheyKnow: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/incident_2410007359_fleetwood_ro
- Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, narrative log for incident 2410007359, disclosed 2 September 2026. Quotations in this article are taken from page 3, which has been checked against the page image.
- Environment Agency, EIR2026/37608, disclosed 2 September 2026, incident record NIRS 2315524 and AGC Chemicals Europe’s Schedule 5 Part A notification, via WhatDoTheyKnow: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fire_at_agc_chemicals_europe_ltd_2
- Civil Contingencies Act 2004, section 2(1)(g), and the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (Contingency Planning) Regulations 2005, on the duty of Category 1 responders to maintain arrangements to warn and inform the public.
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. Ten pumping appliances attended in total, of which six had arrived by 18:07, the minute at which the Environment Agency’s own record gives its time notified and describes a “6 pump fire”. The two figures are a snapshot and a total rather than a discrepancy; the Service’s appliance list gives the arrival time of each. Appliances attended from 16:58 that day, the last arriving at 09:50 the following morning, with the stop message recorded at 11:11.
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 question about toxic gas risk was asked, answered on the basis of wind direction and smoke, and relayed back to the body that asked it, in five minutes and twenty-six seconds.
The answer about residents
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, an entry marked “[INFORMATIVE] BY PHONE FROM” a caller whose identity the Service withheld under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It reports what 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 control room was told at 18:04 on the night. We cannot say who told it. 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 account of the gas release reached the control room at 18:04:43, and the Agency’s own record gives its time notified as 18:07, a minute after the call. At 18:16:58 the Service’s log records the Agency’s incident number and that the information was being passed to an environment officer.
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. A request to British Transport Police asking exactly that is drafted and not yet filed.
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”, using the checked text of pages 2 and 3 and the optical character recognition of pages 1, 4 and 5. 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.
Corrected 25 September 2026: the headline, the account of the 18:04:43 log entry, the number of appliances and the attendance times, the description of the exchange about trains, the timing of the Environment Agency’s notification, and a statement that we had already asked British Transport Police which line was meant. Details are on our changelog.