The day fire came to Stourbridge Golf Club

At 5am on the morning after a fire tore through Stourbridge Golf Club, Course Manager Tom Barnett returned to assess the damage. Although staff were not yet allowed onto the course, he had to find out if the sheds were still standing. 

To his relief, they were, with the machinery housed inside left untouched by the flames. The clubhouse had also emerged unscathed, although fire crews continued to tackle hotspots in the woodland while families living beside the course were confronting the loss of their homes. 

When the team left early the day before to escape the blistering heat, there had been no indication of the drama that was about to unfold. Then Tom's phone rang. 

"I was on my way home when I got a phone call saying: 'We've got wildfires. You need to get back'," he explained. "When I arrived, the fields had already gone and there were fires on the golf course. The wildfire had started over on the neighbouring fields. With the wind direction, it blew directly towards the golf course. Once it reached the hedge line, the fire jumped the hedge and swept across the bottom third of the course." 

Tom and Greens Director Andy Pooler drove onto the course on a buggy to find golfers and warn nearby residents. 

"It was a matter of making sure the residents were out, making sure everybody else was up at the clubhouse and liaising with the fire crews and police," he said. "We even had people coming out of their houses to have a look. We were telling them: 'You need to get to the street side of your house and wait for the fire crews and police'.  I've never seen anything move so quickly. It was like something out of a Hollywood movie: the speed, the heat, the smoke, the ash and the smell. There was all sorts burning, from vegetation and trees to things in our yard." 

The fire spread across more than 500 acres around Stourbridge, leaving 19 homes destroyed and another 18 damaged. 

"It was horrifying because you could hear the individual houses catching fire and you could hear them exploding," Tom said. "It was awful." 

Smoke and ash 

When fire crews reached the club, Tom let them into the greenkeeping yard, where several potential accelerants were located. 

"The yard was still on fire and full of smoke and ash," he said. "I had to tell them: 'We've got diesel, fertiliser, oil – the lot'. I think they concentrated on that part of the yard because we had those things in containers. 

"By that point, we had to get out because it was so hot. I had my T-shirt over my face and covering my head. I was thinking: 'That's it now'. They worked wonders because they managed to save the sheds, so our machinery inside survived. It was the things left outside, such as the Verti-Drains, slitters and digger, that suffered a lot of heat and fire damage. The waste oil store blew its doors, the washdown bays melted and the building materials in the yard were lost." 

The fire also knocked out the power supply, preventing the irrigation system from running that night. When it came back online, Tom's team needed to replace moisture lost from the greens while fire crews were still dealing with the remnants of the blaze. 

 

"Once the power was back, we helped put out fires with our irrigation hoses and sprinklers while also doing our hand watering," Tom said. "We'd had no irrigation after the hottest day of the year, so the greens had dried out.  Through the weekend, it was about getting water back on and replenishing what we had lost. We couldn't restart normal maintenance until the Tuesday morning." 

Once Tom was able to inspect the course, the difference between the closely mown surfaces and surrounding areas was clear. 

"The greens and tees survived, really," he said. "There were a few scorch marks from embers on a couple of greens, but the surfaces were okay. The fairways, rough and long rough had really bad burn damage because of the longer grass." 

Around 600 metres of hedgerow was lost and initial surveys suggested between 800 and 1,000 trees would have to be felled. That work must be completed before the main turf recovery can begin. 

"Some of the trees are absolutely ginormous," Tom said. "A national company has surveyed them and will deal with them for us. The bottom two-thirds will remain closed until the tree surgeons have taken out the unsafe trees." 

 

The calls start coming 

The six unaffected holes have since reopened. The rest of the course will remain closed until the dangerous trees have been removed, allowing Tom to begin restoring the turf. 

"I've mapped it out, but I'm waiting for things to arrive and piecing it together," he said. "The seed is being delivered and I'm speaking to hire companies and dealers about replacing what we've lost. From the turf side, it will be a full overseed of the affected areas, hopefully with help from neighbouring golf clubs that have offered topdressers, seeders and staff. It will be an all-hands-on-deck job." 

Offers of help began arriving almost immediately. Greenkeepers, golf clubs and businesses pledged staff, machinery and transport. Other clubs gave Stourbridge members somewhere to play. 

"The list is endless and I don't want to leave anybody out," Tom said. "I've had messages from people I've never met before.

"My phone has been that hot. I've been offered machinery and trailers. Other greenkeepers gave me definite timelines for when I could use their equipment. One said: 'You can have my topdresser until I'm doing my maintenance in September'. It takes some of the load away. There is still worry, but if the hire companies are busy, you have that back-up. You can phone these guys and know they will help.

 "It has been quite heartwarming and it has reassured me that we are a tight community in the greenkeeping game." 

What if it happens again? 

Alongside the immediate recovery, Tom is beginning to consider how the course could be protected if fire threatens its boundaries again. 

"It has planted a seed in my mind," he said. "For the last few years we have talked about summers getting hotter. Until this happens, you don't start the conversation about futureproofing and asking: 'What if it happens again?'. Do we need a sprinkler system along the boundary? Do we need a ditch or some sort of bund? I don't know. You have all these things going through your mind. We need something that would at least alleviate the damage if it happened again. The golf course has been here since 1892 and a lot of it is natural. We have hedgerows as boundaries and hardly any fencing. The lost hedgerow might be replaced with palisade fencing, which we would have to dress with foliage and shrubs and try to get back to nature.  There is all that side of it as well. Foxes, rabbits and birds – everything has probably been moved on. It's going to take a lot of time to replenish what we have lost." 

Tom said the damage may also give the team a chance to reconsider parts of the course that were usually pushed down the work programme. 

"In the long run, it might be a small blessing in areas you never get the chance to do anything to because there is always something more important," he explained. "It has almost given us a semi-blank canvas where we can say: 'Okay, let's do something here'. There are a couple of silver linings in some of it." 

Tom's role in the recovery extends beyond coordinating contractors and rebuilding the maintenance programme. His team returned to a workplace transformed, with much of the course out of play and no certainty over how quickly normal operations could resume. The effect of the fire on those around him soon became another part of the job. 

 

 

"I think that has been the biggest thing: making sure the lads are all right," he said. "One of them asked: 'Have we still got jobs?' I said: 'The sheds are still here, the clubhouse is still here and we're still here'. There is a lot of damage, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. It has been about reassuring the team and saying: 'We've got a responsibility now. Let's turn it around together.' The lads have been great. It has pushed them, but we have had no choice. Special thanks have to go to the team and the directors. It has brought out the best in a lot of people." 

Reopening six holes marked the first stage of the recovery. Restoring the damaged turf will take months and the loss of mature trees and habitats will be felt for far longer. In the meantime, Tom's planned maintenance programme has been replaced by the demands of bringing the course back. 

"People have asked how I am and I feel all right," he said. "In this game, you can't sit still. You have to start piecing it together and get things moving. 'Looking forward to it' is the wrong phrase, but I'm positive I can turn it around. I'm looking forward to testing the skills I have and learning new ones. Members ask: 'Do you think it's going to come back?'. It hasn't taken all of it. It's going to take seed, some TLC and a lot of patience, but we'll do it. 

"It isn't something I'm going to shy away from – we will get it back."