Bodies of two men found in wreckage of fireworks-blaze warehouse
THE bodies of two men have been discovered in the wreckage of a blaze-damaged fireworks warehouse.
Staffordshire Police said the remains were discovered almost 24 hours after an explosion rocked the Baswich industrial estate in Stafford, sparking a huge fire which ripped through an industrial unit at 5:15pm on Thursday.
One of the victims was named locally as Simon Hillier.
A 53-year-old man arrested in connection with the incident has been released and is now being treated as a witness.
An initial explosion at the SP Plastics unit, where police said a “significant volume of fireworks” were being stored, sparked a blaze that took firefighters three hours to bring under control. The fireblackened ruin of the building was still smoking yesterday afternoon, preventing a more detailed search of the wreckage.
The local council has since said there have been “no safety issues” with SP Plastics, and that it had been licensed to sell fireworks for four years.
Police Superintendent Ian Coxhead said: “We have a great deal of sensitive and challenging work to complete in order to allow us to establish the cause of the explosion and the following fire.”
He added that the sheer level of destruction at the site meant search teams were expected to be there “for some time”.
On Thursday night, dramatic footage showed thick plumes of smoke and bursts of fireworks exploding in all directions from the factory – a scene one witness described as “horrendous”. Another, 66-year-old Neil Kendall, described the noise as “deafening” and “constant”, as the fireworks detonated.
He is the head of the residents’ association on a nearby mobile-home site, where many elderly residents live. His first thought was whether the blaze would spread to their homes, but when it became apparent the wind was blowing the smoke away from the site, concern turned to those who may have been inside the unit.
Mr Kendall said: “There was a guy who had parked his van nearby and he had just come out of there. He said some of his colleagues were inside, buying fireworks, and he was concerned.”
He added that the location was well known locally as somewhere to buy fireworks and that in the seven years he had been there, there had never been any issues.
At the height of the blaze, there were 50 firefighters at the scene, the fire service said.
Two men were taken to the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, one in his 60s suffering from a back injury who is now in a stable condition, and another, in his 40s, with serious burns – his condition was described as “poorly” by police. A woman in her 40s and another in her 50s were assessed for smoke inhalation but discharged at the scene.
Yesterday, workers employed in neighbouring units were able to collect cars that had been trapped behind the fire cordon after the blaze broke out.