Fire tears through storage shed in Dalby
Photo: Sarah Williams
INVESTIGATORS are working to determine the cause of a fire that ripped through a Hardys Furniture Removals shed in Napier St, Dalby yesterday.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Area Commander Inspector Warren Buckley said local crews from Dalby, Jandowae and Cecil Plains had done a tremendous job of containing the fire to a 20sq m area when the damage to surrounding businesses could have been so much worse.
Two crews were initially called to the blaze about 1pm yesterday and a team from Toowoomba arrived later to back up local crews.
“The whole structure is 100m by 40m and they’ve contained it to the south-west section; that’s totally destroyed,” Insp. Buckley said.
“There were motor vehicles in there, tyres, oil and workshop materials, so it was a high fire load.”
An exclusion zone was setup after firefighters were made aware there was possibly 1000kg of gas cylinders inside the building.
Dalby State High School was briefly put in lockdown to ensure students’ safety. It was later established the gas was stored in an adjacent shed to the one that burned down and the exclusion zone was revoked.
Dalby CIB Detective Digby Ford said investigators were on scene to determine the cause of the fire.
“I would hope there is nothing suspicious and at this stage it looks like nothing suspicious, but it’s such early days that we haven’t even been able to sit down with the occupants from Hardy’s Removals yet.”