A fire on an army training range in Dorset that took around 100 firefighters to extinguish is thought to have spread quickly due to high winds and difficult terrain.

The Mexe training range - situated on heathland used by soldiers from Bovington Camp - caught fire last Tuesday at around 8pm. It took around three hours for firefighters to extinguish the fire, while the army provided road blocks in the surrounding area. In attendance were crews from Weymouth and Portland, Bournemouth, Poole, Blandford and Dorchester stations.

The fire had initially been reported as small, but firefighters had to use beaters and hose reel jets to prevent the blaze spreading to a nearby forest and conservation area. “We’ve had wonderful weather over the past week,” a spokesman from the Dorset fire service told info4fire,“but this meant the ground was dry. Winds were high and the fact that it was heath land was just ammunition.”

A reported five hectares of heathland have been destroyed. A spokesman from the MoD said it was a “gorse fire” and not being treated as suspicious.