Flaming tornado: Blaze at plastics factory captures rare fire phenomenon

Towering into the night sky amid the billowing smoke, this is the rare phenomenon known as a 'fire tornado'.

It was captured during a huge blaze at a plastic processing plant in Kistarcsa, a suburb of Hungarian capital Budapest, reports Daily Mail.

So far, no casualties have been reported in the blaze, which broke out at around 8pm. The cause of the fire is unknown.

Around 70 firefighters tackled the blaze, pulling down a wall surrounding the building to aid their operation to extinguish the fire.

A news agency reporter at the scene said that 15 foot high flames were also spotted, while a number of small and large explosions were heard.

It is understood that the building destroyed was around 400 square metres in size and contained some of the raw materials used in the construction of the material.

The fire tornado, also known as a whirl, only appears under certain conditions and forms a vertical column of air, which can on occasion, be separate from other flames.

They most commonly form from wildfires and are usually around 10 to 50 metres tall, a few metres wide and last for a few minutes - however examples stretching over a kilometre high have been recorded.

The most deadly ever recorded was during the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake in Japan, when a huge example of the phenomenon killed 38,000 in 15 minutes.

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