Luxury car showroom destroyed by blaze
THE owners of a car firm in West Lancashire have spoken after a fire destroyed the site.
Eight fire crews were called out to RB Motorsport on Dark Lane in Mawdesley on Friday.
At the height of the blaze more than 60 firefighters were trying to put out the intense flames.
A number of high performance cars were kept in and outside the building, with the owners left counting the cost.
A statement from RB Motorsport said: “As people have probably seen over social media and the news, we have had a fire at our unit.
“Not sure on the full extent of the damage but as it is clear by pictures... 99% of everything has been destroyed unfortunately along with customers’ cars which we are most upset about, once we have more details we will publish them to keep our customer base informed.
“We hope to be up and back to normal as soon as we can but it’s understandable it’s going to be a long time before we’re up and running again.”
Despite the devastation, the owners are thankful that the consequences were not worse.
They said: “Two things we’re thankful for is that no-one has been hurt and secondly that all of the help and effort that has been offered by everyone involved, well and truly thankful for everyone’s efforts and help we’ve received.
“We’ll keep everyone informed and hope to have emails up and running soon.”
RB Motorsport is a Nissan Skyline and GTR specialist with experience in maintaining, servicing, upgrading and tuning of the high-performance Japanese GT cars.
It is not yet known how the blaze started, but Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service said it will investigate.
A spokesman said: “A fire in a car workshop prompted a response of eight fire engines and crews in addition to the ‘stinger’ appliance (based at Blackburn) to jet water down onto the fire and the command unit and support pump from Fulwood.
“In addition to the stinger jet, firefighters used three main jets, hosereel jets and were equipped with breathing apparatus. They used firefighting foam injected into the water to better extinguish the fuel and oil ignited in the blaze, and took steps to ensure that local drains and watercourses were not contaminated by the water used to fight the fire.
“The remote location made it necessary to pump water from sources some distance away, which explains the number of fire engines required, one at source pumping to one nearer the fire, then to the next nearest and so on.
“The cause of the fire is being looked into.”