St Saviour’s packing shed goes up in flames
A FORMER horticultural packing shed was destroyed by fire yesterday lunchtime.
The Fire and Rescue Service was called to the blaze, at Rue des Massies, St Saviour’s, at about 11.20am.
A crew of five was despatched on one appliance with a water tender accompanying them, but a nearby fire hydrant ended up being used.
There were two shipping containers near the shed that were also used for storage and one of these was affected, but no other property was damaged.
‘There was quite a large smoke plume and we advised neighbouring houses to keep their windows shut,’ said station officer Gary Van der Linden.
The wind direction meant that the airport was fortunately not affected by the plume, he said.
The shed roof was corrugated asbestos, so the two firefighters involved in extinguishing the blaze wore breathing apparatus and underwent a decontamination procedure afterwards.
Mr Van der Linden said Environmental Health and Guernsey Water would later be visiting the scene.
Property owner Graham Cloarec said the building dated from the 1950s and was used to store various equipment including a lawn mower and a ride-on mower.
‘I saw some smoke coming from near the shed and I thought someone had lit a bonfire.
‘When I came out into the garden, I saw it was the shed.’
He suspected that an electrical fault was likely to be to blame for the blaze, but Mr Van der Linden said that was unclear.
‘We are trying to determine the cause but there was nothing hazardous in the building apart from the electrics.
‘After talking to the property owner there is no reason to believe it’s suspicious.’
