Very fuel-ish behaviour in Burnaston!
Panic-buying motorists queued for three hours on Monday to get into a petrol station – that was closed.
South Derbyshire police were confronted by 100 drivers trying to get into an unmanned Gulf petrol station – closed due to vandals attacking the pumps – after being called to the remote village of Burnaston.
The forces’ Safer Neighbourhood Team had been called following reports of queues of traffic in the area.
In a tongue-in-cheek post on the Swadlincote Police SNT Facebook page the force mocked motorists’ “fuel-ish” behaviour.
“Arriving at the unmanned petrol station on the extremely fast-flowing A516 roadway, officers observed long queues of cars attempting to enter the petrol station,” the force wrote.
“Bizarrely, it soon became clear that the drivers had been queuing at a petrol station for several hours despite the fact that the garage was not open to the public and was unable to serve fuel following unknown persons who had caused damage to some of the petrol and diesel pumps.”
Police then attempted to explain the situation to drivers who had been sitting in their cars for “over three hours”.
It didn’t go down well: “With regret, officers, who were stood outside in pouring rain directing traffic, were subjected to abuse and a series of inexplicable excuses of why they needed to enter a closed garage that was unable to sell fuel.”
An investigation is underway to locate two men in a white van who made threats to an officer at the scene after they were asked to leave the petrol station, the force said.
One irate driver told officers he was so desperate to refill his car, he had been driving for over three hours looking for fuel “and was furious”.
The fact he’d wasted fuel, trying to find fuel, wasn’t something he initially grasped.
“When asked how much fuel he’d used looking for petrol he finally appeared to grasp the lack of solid ground his argument stood upon,” the force wrote on Facebook.
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