A quiet Christmas evening turned into a nightmare for some North Shore residents when they were forced to evacuate their homes after a fire broke out at the Tynes Bay Waste Treatment Facility.

Chief fire officer, Vincent Hollinsid, said the fire was first reported around 7 p.m. on December 25 at the treatment facility where a pile of rubbish some 50 feet high and wide and 100 feet in length caught alight.

At one stage flames licked up to 80 feet into the air and a crew of some 40 fire fighters and nine fire vehicles battled for more than two days to get the fire under control.

"They worked in rotation to get it under control and we had to call an additional 25 people in to help. This is the worst fire we've ever had to deal with in Bermuda because we couldn't get to the site without some difficulty and because it was impossible to have a fire break. It was just en enormous pile of rubbish that was burning out of control," Mr. Hollinsid said.

By late yesterday afternoon about 15 fire officers were still pumping water on to the smouldering heap which was being pulled apart by Works and Engineering.

The heap of burnt out waste was slowly being broken up with the help of excavating equipment and taken by truck to other waste disposal sites on the Island as fire fighters tried to get to the core of the heap where it still burnt.

"The biggest problem we had when we first arrived on the scene was the fact that it was low tide and we couldn't pump water from the sea due to lack of suction, but eventually we got a break," Mr. Hollinsid said.

He said the situation could have been far worse had the site been far from water.

"We have fire trucks capable of pumping some 15,000 gallons of water a minute and they were pumping at about three quarters capacity over the two days. We must have pumped thousands of gallons of water," he said.

Electricity to the entire area had to be cut and most of North Shore Road around Palmetto Park was closed to traffic until after 8 p.m. last night.

Residents who didn't leave their homes spent the weekend watching the firestorm on their doorsteps.

Patrick De Silva and his family had just sat down to enjoy their Christmas dinner when they heard the fire trucks pull up outside their home.

"We went outside and saw the huge pile of rubbish at Tynes Bay was on fire. At that stage the flames were over 50 feet high," he said.

Mr. De Silva said the Christmas dinner was forgotten as they grabbed water hoses and started spraying water into the bushes and trees that divide his home from the Tynes Bay Waste Treatment Facility.

He said he convinced his family to leave while he stayed to help fire fighters keep the fire from his door.

In an interview yesterday an exhausted looking Mr. De Silva said the fire, which raged less than 200 metres from his house, wasn't really a threat at any time, but he preferred to stay and help fire fighters.

"It was a nightmare," he said wiping his blackened hands down his pants.

He pointed towards the area where excavation trucks were still working and said it could have been worse.

"We complained to Tynes Bay many times about that pile of waste. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, but each time we were told the incinerator was being serviced," he said.

Power was returned to the area shortly before 1 a.m. yesterday and residents slowly started returning to their homes.

Mr. Hollinsid said he had been worried in the past about the rubbish piling up at the centre as it was considered a fire hazard, but unfortunately nothing had been done about it.

He said last night that the Fire Department would be meeting with Works and Engineering authorities in the coming days to prevent anything like this ever happening again.

"This fire might not have damaged any properties, but it's still going to cost us thousands of dollars because we now have to pay most of our staff overtime and many were off duty because it was Christmas," he said.

He couldn't confirm just how much it would cost, but said it was going to be "very, very expensive."

Mr. Hollinsid said the cause of the fire is under investigation.