Like Sue, I was in the thick of the F&M outbreak. At first bodies were burnt, the pyres were plumes of smoke by day and glowed at night, for days. As Sue says, railway sleepers were reported to be the main fuel. Then we had the huge burial pits at Tow Law. I have not heard of anyone disturbing any of the pyre sites locally, so can't help on the state of the bones. I might put a discrete word out on the grapevine. It was an unbelievable time to live through. It's neither forgiven nor forgotten.
________________________________________
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Sue Millard [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 01 November 2013 10:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] Mass burning of animal carcasses
Richard, can I recommend to you an account of the 2001 foot and
mouth outbreak compiled by Caz Graham of BBC Radio Cumbria:
"Foot and Mouth: Heart and Soul - a collection of personal
accounts of the foot and mouth outbreak in Cumbria 2001."
Published 2001 by Small Sister for BBC Radio Cumbria.
This will give you an overview of the situation, plus an insight into
individual cases and how the business was organised (or in many
cases disorganised) re fuel, collection, burial etc.
I know that the fuel involved in the case of friends' farms was
wooden railway sleepers and coal, and that the pyres burned for
days, sending up huge towers of white smoke. Pyre burning was
discontinued for many reasons, of which fuel consumption/cost
was only one: the pyres presented a terrible image at the start of
the tourist season (the rural areas worst affected, Cumbria and
Devon, rely very much on tourist income); the smell was horrible;
politicians were panicked by the images which appeared during the
run up to a General Election (and the anger that in the countryside
was close to civil unrest); ghoulish people came from towns to see
the pyres burning (one of our friends decided against using a
baseball bat and instead sprayed them rapidly with disinfectant
from his farming knapsack sprayer); there was a feeling, shared by
many in the community, that the fumes from the burning could
actually spread the disease, as could the wild predators such as
foxes, crows etc which attacked the piled carcases before the
burning began. Burial in the mass site at Longtown at least
avoided some of these problems.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2144145.stm and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1385101/Brigadiers-bat
tle-with-No10-over-the-foot-and-mouth-cull.html will give further
insight, as will the Foot and Mouth Diary,
http://www.suemillard.f9.co.uk/fmd1.shtml.
As for whether the result of the burning was calcined, thank god
none of our neighbours' stock was burned, so I can't tell you.
Sue Millard
still angry 12 years on.
On 31 Oct 2013 at 14:33, Richard Wright wrote:
> Hello
>
> In 2001, during the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in UK, some
> thousands of farm animals were burned on pyres.
>
> Did anybody in UK (or anywhere, for that matter) look at the methods
> and results of such burning from the point of view of archaeology or
> forensics?
>
> Richard Wright
>
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2013.0.3426 / Virus Database: 3222/6795 - Release Date:
> 10/30/13
>
Sue Millard MSc, BEd
Web minion for Fell Pony and Countryside Museums
http://www.fellpony.f9.co.uk/
|
