Fire at television mast cuts off signal for large parts of northeast

Freeview and radio services cut in three counties

(PA)

A 1,000ft tall television transmitter covering much of northeast England caught on fire, knocking out signal for potentially hundreds of thousands of homes.

Firefighters were not certain what had caused the fire at Bilsdale transmitting centre on the North York Moors on Tuesday, with emergency responders remaining on the scene late into the evening.

Eight engines were sent to tackle the blaze that has now been extinguished. The North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (NYFRS) said concerns remain around the structural integrity of the mast.

The Bilsdale mast provides signal for Freeview television and digital radio in Teeside, North Yorkshire and County Durham. As many as 600,000 homes are within the transmission range of the mast, according to Ofcom. Satellite and cable television services were not effected by the outage.

An engineer working at the transmitter first reported the fire at 1.19pm. NYFRS said the engineer “believed the mast was on fire due to smoke coming from below the first stay level” – about 164 to 196ft in the air – with calls coming from members of the public who also spotted the smoke from a distance.

Only one building in a complex of four was affected, the NYFRS said. Firefighters extinguished a fire in a “single-storey stone building” and a “transmitter mast”. A 350m exclusion zone was put in place around the mast, the fire service said.

NYFRS said it would be working on Wednesday with Arqiva, the site operators, “to bring the incident to safe conclusion”.

A spokesman for Arqiva said: “The fire at Bilsdale has caused damage to our equipment and we are currently unable to broadcast TV and radio services from this site.

“Bilsdale is under the control of the fire services. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

Additional reporting by PA