Police cannot confirm whether fireworks display was factor in M5 pile-up

The club’s ground is next to the M5 where the accident happened. Thick black smoke was generated by the large firework display at a time when mist or a light fog was beginning to emerge.

A spokesman for Taunton Rugby Club said it was not prepared to make any comment regarding speculation about the cause of the accident.

Oli Massingham said: “The only thing I will say is that the firework display started at 8pm and finished at 8.15pm.”

Police could not say whether the fireworks display might have been a factor, but Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Bangham from Avon and Somerset Police said it was “certainly something we’ll be looking at closely”.

A nearby smallholding also had a large bonfire which was generating black smoke.

Josie Gallimore, 60, and husband Brian, 61, live near the accident scene in a cottage in Hyde Lane.

They learned of the devastating accident from neighbours and walked the few minutes to Hyde Lane bridge from their home.

The bridge overlooks the motorway and gave them a clear view of the crash scene involving dozens of mangled vehicles.

“It was about 11.30pm and there were helicopters and fire engines and a lot of noise,” said Mrs Gallimore.

“We didn’t stay long because it was too disturbing. You could hear the cries of the little ones trapped in their cars.

“They had to remain in their cars with their families and apparently some were there for up to three and a half hours.

“We walked back home afterwards and we could hear the sirens going until about 2am. There were helicopters as well. I didn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t. It’s a terrible tragedy.”

Mr Bangham said: “There’s a number of factors that came into play. It was dark – it was about 8.25pm – it was particularly poor weather last night, we had fog banks on the motorway and we also had wet surface issues.

“We had in particular ground water in the Bridgwater area which we were dealing with.

“There were also other factors coming into play: there were events going on in the evening and of course we need to have a very close look at what was going on in the area that may have caused some sort of distraction.”

For a motorway incident this was, he said, “just about as big as it gets”.

He added: “It was a highly complex, very traumatic incident as well for our services and officers.”

Some members of the public had also shown “real bravery” in arriving quickly on the scene and trying to help others, he said, thanking those who had been in the area and taken actions themselves.

“The intensity of the fire – it was a fireball on the carriageway – made it incredibly difficult for people to approach,” he said. “People did their very best.”

The intensity of the fireball was “quite unusual”, he added.

Emergency services were continuing to search for casualties well into the day, both in vehicles and in the nearby carriageway.

A mixture of heavy goods vehicles and light vehicles were involved, and a number were in close contact, burnt and unrecognisable.

Mr Bangham described it as a “real mash of many, many vehicles” and said it was believed that some people were still trapped inside.

He added: “The goods vehicles were well alight and have been very significantly burnt.”

Police were contacting families of those caught up in the incident and people who were concerned that their loved ones had not returned home.

“The most important thing is we support the families and look after their needs in this most difficult time”, Mr Bangham said.

He appealed for witnesses to send in any mobile phone footage of the incident that they might have taken, as emergency services worked together to carry out what was a “very, very significant operation.”

A "comprehensive and thorough" investigation into what caused the tragedy will now be carried out, Mr Bangham said.

Describing the incident earlier, he said: “Most vehicles were well alight and most continued to burn for a considerable time. This made it very difficult to search the vehicles. Some of them have been burned to the ground.”

Firefighters who scrambled around 15 appliances to the scene battled to rescue motorists by cutting people from cars and lorries using hydraulic equipment, while shocked witnesses described the inferno and ensuing carnage.

Simon Bruford, 38, from Williton in Somerset, who was driving south, told the BBC: “I could see the flames from quite a way back.

“I spent 18 years in the Somerset fire service and have seen a lot nasty things, but that was horrific.”

Paul O’Connor, who was travelling to Plymouth when the incident happened, told Sky News: “I thought it was something to do with bonfire night and then realised it was something quite bad.

“I have never seen anything like that. I could see people lying on the side of the road. It was quite disturbing really.

“I saw two people lying down and there were quite a lot of people around them. The emergency services were doing what they could. I don’t know if they were OK.”

Local resident Bev Davis heard the accident from her home close to the motorway.

“All we could hear was the sound of a horn and then the flames got so high so quickly and the noise was horrific,” she told the BBC.

“There were explosions of what I think must have been tyres – it was as though the fireworks were starting again but we knew they had finished.

“There must have been 200 metres-worth of fire – plumes of smoke were going up and everything was red.”

Weather forecasters said conditions had been misty and any bonfires burning nearby could have made things worse.

Gareth Harvey, a forecaster at MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said: "The particles bonfires release encourage fog droplets to form.

“By 9pm there were (weather) stations in the county reporting visibility down to 100 metres. The roads would also have been wet due to an earlier deluge.”