UPDATE 1735: Portswood road to remain closed for at least two more hours. It is not yet clear whether residents can return to or leave their homes
UPDATE 17:00: Portswood Road is closed between Lodge Road (Tesco) and Brookvale Road (Blockbuster) Police have created a ‘refuge’ for local residents who can’t get home. We will update as and when we get more information. Call 101 for more information
Another large fire has broken out in Southampton, this time in the student heartland itself.
A storage warehouse behind Clean Getaway carwash is currently alight. Firefighters are on the scene to tackle the blaze, and Portswood Road is currently closed to both pedestrians and road traffic between Gordon Avenue and Alma Road.
When questioned the police informed the Tab that due to the contents of the warehouse being unknown, but with a high likelihood of gas cylinders being kept in storage, they are exacting an exclusion zone as the smoke is likely to be toxic.
Just walking past the fire down Portswood Road left one student stinking of smoke, who commented
I could smell it on campus and it just got stronger and stronger down towards Portswood – similar to last week’s blaze but much closer to home!
Buses are being diverted up the Avenue to keep them away from the area. Police are conducting door-to-door visits to reassure local residents.
Local events company Squeeze 18 are “” on the scene, and have provided photos on their twitter feed.
As with the scrapyard fire last week, locals are advised to stay inside out of the smoke. We’ll keep you updated as soon as we learn more.
Want to see more photos? Click here for our Flickr Site. If you’ve photos to add, email them to or tweet and we’ll get them up for you!
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I just drove through it before the road was closed off, you could hardly see the blue lights of the fire brigade ahead. People were standing around unsure quite what to make of it all. I heard they have sent as many as 10 rigs to tackle it. Never a dull moment in portswood
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Student “Thomas Grizzelle” saves the day by calling the Fire Brigade!
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nice beamer in that one photo!
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nice to see soton tab keeping on top ofn this whilst SUSU ignores it…
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http://www.wessexscene.co.uk/news/top-news/2012/04/25/fire-breaks-out-in-portswood/
WS and ST were both incredible at following this story today… So SUSU (not being a news site) played more of a directory role, pointing students to both the Soton Tab and Wessex Scene.
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The time of the Scene article is 3:36pm. The time of the Tab article is 3:39pm.
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The time of when i give a shit about the publishing times is ten past never…. No one is claiming they’re better then the other, both been supporting the other on twitter. Celebrate student media scooping local media rather then trying to score childish points you numpty!!!
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Just responding to Tom’s comment, thanks…
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How does the times of articles being published respond to the comment? As we’re always told by people the WS isn’t SUSU so the time the WS wrote about it had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!!! Or is that just another lie we’ve been fed by the clique massive?
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Because he said SUSU (by which I assumed he meant the Scene) were ignoring it, and clearly they weren’t. Wake up.
Do you really think 3 minutes matters? I could have had sex in less time than that.
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David is right, each publication has been on top form vis-à-vis today’s goings on and has also admired the other’s impressively speedy, accurate reporting and sky-high hits.. so let’s just leave it at that and call it a day and go to bed to dream of a news international scenario one day occurring on the Southampton Uni media scene.. and then in the morning we will wake up and be faced once again with the grim truth that such an occurrence is unlikely even with the likes of Chris Houghton still around, thus the (fr)enmity will still exist and we will be back to scooping each other again..sleep tight guys
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