Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Nothing much happens in our town. Quite a busy town, but reasonably quiet and civilised. Everyone is polite, friendly and cheerful. No heated argumaents in the supermarkets or post office queues.

What we do seem to have a lot of, is road works. Hardly a week goes by without the arrival of the dreaded traffic cones turning up somewhere.

We live on a busy main road so we get our fair share of roadworks. So, when we heard familiar activity outside last night, we assumed that it was our turn again.

But we were wrong. A big fire engine was trying to make its way down one of smaller side roads opposite us, realising too late that there could be a better route.

We were wondering why it was here, as there had been no sirens. That was when we looked further afield to the bottom of this side road, where a scene straight from a newsreel was being played out. Clouds of smoke hid most of the buildings, but climbing out of this smoke, like a ghost from the past, was a fireman on a ladder, operating a massive fire hose. Instantly, we knew this was serious.

We found out later that this fire started in one of the flats above the shops and had been raging all afternoon, seriously out of control. 14 fire engines were involved. No one was hurt, but a lot of properties were destroyed…