The view from Gateshead

The trains ran on time in both directions and it was an unremarkable day at the Gateshead office. A colleague asked if anyone had a digital camera she could borrow to record some outreach type event because the office camera was out of juice and no one could find the charger, so I said "Yes, of course, borrow mine!". Half an hour later I was called to the other side of the building to witness the raging inferno that was happening in Byker; an obvious blip, I thought, before realising that I didn't have my camera. So this is the best that the smartphone could do. Puretone got a lot closer than I did!

It was a scrapyard that went up; it all happened very quickly according to the guy who was working in there at the time. Amazingly no one was injured, although one man was taken to hospital due to smoke inhalation. The BBC finally caught up with it all about two hours later. It was under control, but still burning, by the time I caught the train home.