A woman has described witnessing the moment she believes the Suffolk wildfire started, telling ITV News there was "no one around".
Charlotte Du Cann, a local, said she was walking back from Dunwich Heath with a friend on Wednesday evening, and was about to cross into Minsmere Woods when she "heard a crackle".
"My friend, who was with me, said ‘I smell smoke’ so we both looked down and there quite a way down…was a circle of fire," she said.
"It was not big, it was like maybe 20 feet across, and so…we were jumping on it trying to stamp it out.
"I think if we had fire beaters we might have been able to get it out, but there was just no way because it suddenly lit the heather and leapt up to a Scots Pine."
Du Cann said she rang the fire brigade immediately and ran across the Heath to tell the nearby National Trust.
She said the area where the fire was "off the path" and that there was no cigarette butt or camping equipment around.
"I don’t know what started it," Du Cann said. "There was nobody around."
"It’s like a tinderbox out there," she added. "It was devastating. I live here, this is my heartland."
Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service declared a major incident after the blaze broke out. By Thursday afternoon, the fire had spread to around 150 hectares, an area roughly equivalent to 210 football pitches.
The scale of the blaze has grown rapidly and is expected to continue burning for another two days, but firefighters say efforts to contain it are "moving in the right direction".
Crews remained at the scene again overnight on Thursday, working across three sectors with a rolling programme of relief crews.
The fire is burning close to the Sizewell B nuclear power station and the construction site of the new Sizewell C plant.
Firefighters have begun to dig breakers around the blaze using machinery from the Sizewell site.
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