Popular presenter Julia Bradbury visited Chiltern International Fire (CIF) to shoot a documentary – about sheep. And Sir Ken Knight, HM Chief Inspector of Fire Services and Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser in England & Wales played a key role in guiding viewers through the fire tests carried out.
The footage, shot by Dragonfly Productions, was aired last month as part of the BBC 3 series ‘Kill it, Cut It, Use It’, where Julia Bradbury was joined by young consumers ‘to uncover the surprising animal origins of many of our favourite things as they follow the transformation of each body part from abattoir to shop floor’.
Young couple Aiesha and Dan were invited to watch the filming as bedding made from wool – mattress, pillows and sheep-bedecked blanket - was set alight in CIF’s demonstrator unit. While the wool products were barely smouldering after five minutes, the same could not be said of the polyester based equivalents used in the second test. Within the same time frame, all that was left of the bedroom scenario was a charred bed frame and mattress base.
As CIF Head of Section, Fire Behaviour, Philip Howard, explained, ‘Wool has a higher ignition temperature than some synthetic fibres, does not produce flaming droplets once lit and has slow flame spread properties because of the char that forms when it burns. As a result, the speed at which a fire develops once the material has ignited can be a lot slower.’
Dragonfly is not the first film company to recognise the benefits of filming at Chiltern International Fire. Mr Howard said: ‘Earlier this year we mocked up a store facade for a safety DVD for Tesco. We offer something quite special for film crews, the facilities to create real fires in a controlled environment, to enable them to capture dramatic footage and to get across important safety messages, in absolute safety themselves.’
PDF: Chiltern International Fire sets bedroom alight for BBC 3
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