Fire destroys Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare

Monday, 28th July 2008 by

At 6:45am this morning local time, fire fighters were called to a massive blaze taking place at the Weston-super-Mare Grand Pier.

Ironically, the fire service were having difficulty getting enough water to put out the blaze. As you can see in the above image, the pavilion is 800 metres out to sea, and to make matters worse, the tide was out when the fire began.

The pier was first opened in 1904, and was reopened in April this year after a massive revamp. As we’ve seen before it seems to be a tragically frequent occurrence that one of these historic structures burns down, and in fact the Grand Pier previously burnt down in 1930.

Now that the fire has been brought under control, it looks like the pavilion has been completely destroyed, but that the iron foundations of the structure are still standing. Hopefully for Weston-super-Mare someone will undertake the task of restoring the pier to its former glory.

Read more and watch a video at the BBC, see this gallery of pictures or read the pier's Wikipedia page.