Blaze drama (From This is Hampshire)

Blaze drama

5:00pm Saturday 11th February 2012 in News By Emily Roberts

THIRTEEN firefighters were involved in tackling a fire drama on a Basingstoke industrial estate.

The Basingstoke firefighters were called to Telford Road on the Houndmills Industrial Estate at 11.20am last Friday after flames and smoke were spotted coming from the roof of an empty unit.

Two appliances and a specialist equipment unit arrived at the scene. The firefighters spent more than two hours dealing with the fire.

Dave Williams, watch manager, said: “There were some contractors working on the roof doing repairs that involved hot torch work. Unfortunately, that set fire to some internal cladding.

“We had to strip the cladding back. Once the fire gets behind the cladding, the only way to put it out is to rip it away.”

He added: “There’s a bit of smoke damage but most of the damage involves the cladding which we had to take off.”

The contracted builders refused to speak to The Gazette, or say who they were employed by.

Workers in the surrounding units were evacuated from the buildings during the incident, including staff from Sofi Designs Bridal next door.

Andrew Vodden, owner of AVTEC Fasteners Ltd in Unit Three, said the unit on fire had been empty for about a year. He added: “There were flames coming out of there. It looked bad but the fire services were pretty prompt in getting here.”

See The Gazette website basingstokegazette.co.uk for video footage of the fire.