The owner of a commercial vehicle sales business is calling for Chinese lanterns to be banned. It follows an incident where one was the cause of a late night fire that destroyed 19 vehicles and a caravan.
The blaze broke out at Newport Industrial Estate in Launceston just before midnight on Wednesday, June 21. Afterward, Chris Barker, who runs Launceston Commercials, looked at CCTV to establish the cause of the fire and was shocked to see it had begun shortly after a lit lantern landed on one of his vans in the car park, as CornwallLive reports.
The fire brigade were called to the scene just before 11.50pm on Wednesday following a report of flames coming from the industrial estate. They then tackled the blaze which destroyed 20 vehicles.
(Image: Chris Barker)
Chris said: "The lantern came out of the sky onto the front wiper blades of a van at 11.21pm. It sat there for about 20 minutes and then the vehicle caught light.
"It was then a domino effect causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage. Out of the vehicles that caught fire, 10 were mine. There are a lot of vehicles to lose for the business."
(Image: Chris Barker)
He added: "Why would someone set one off on a Wednesday night? I don't know. The only thing I can think of was that it was the summer solstice.
"The worrying thing is it could happen again tonight. People need to realise what harm Chinese lanterns can cause. They should be banned; no one should be able to buy them. At the end of the day, this was not an accident. Someone lit it and although they didn't intend for it to start a fire it did."

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform.