Fire destroys warehouse as owner watches Wembley match

A company has been destroyed in a fire while the owner watched a football match at Wembley Stadium on Saturday evening.

John Charles, who owns AquAid UK in Cambridge received a call from an employee to say that the building was going up in flames.

By the time Mr Charles made it back to the company based in an industrial unit at Dales Manor Business Park, 8 fire crews were at the scene trying to control the flames.  It took firefighters around 7 hours to extinguish the blaze.

No one was injured in the fire. Neighbours were told to keep windows and doors shut and to stay indoors if possible.

Mr Charles said: “The unit has been totally gutted by the fire. It’s when you walk inside it that you realise it’s been burned to cinders. The warehouse is our distribution centre and thankfully, there was nobody inside at the time. I was watching the game at Wembley when one of my employees who lives nearby called me to say he could see black smoke billowing from the warehouse. It was a horrible feeling and I couldn’t believe it when I saw the scale of the damage.  The fire also spread next door, although it looks like it will be OK.”

Mr Charles remains determined that business will carry on as usual and has found a temporary warehouse from which he can run the business.

An investigation will be carried out to determine the cause of the fire.