The owner of a Tavistock business has thanked the fire service for saving his building from destruction although one floor has been gutted.

Craig Howells, owner of Tavistock Hire Centre on Pixon Lane, says his company is trading as normal and reassured his customers he will be staying open, despite the serious damage to the separate firm A&T Cleaning Services which rents the first floor of the building from him.

Tavistock fire crews were called out at 6.37am on Saturday together with crews from Yelverton and Bere Alston and the hydraulic platform from Crownhill Fire Station, Plymouth.

Finding a fierce fire had taken hold of the the first floor of the building, housing a launderette, they called for reinforcements, which came from Princetown, Crownhill, Totnes and Buckfastleigh.

Crews fought the blaze wearing breathing apparatus while the fire was monitored from above with the hydraulic platform using thermal imaging cameras

A fire station spokesman said: “Fortunately due to good fire protection between the properties only water damage was caused to the ground floor business.

“This accidental fire has devastated this local family business – the launderette – with 100 per cent of the contents being destroyed by fire and the remainder of the first floor damaged by heat and smoke.”

Craig said they could not open on Saturday, but have quickly got back on their feet: “We were very lucky the fire upstairs was detected by our alarms and by people who contacted me, like the postie. I’m very sad for the girls who run the launderette. It’s absolutely gutted. The smoke and flames have destroyed all their equipment and damaged the building. I’m just waiting for the insurance to report back.

“The fire service did a really good job They couldn’t have done any more. Between them and the fire safety ceiling which is a fire barrier between us and the floor upstairs they saved us from worse damage and we can’t thank them enough. We are open and trading as normally. Remarkably it’s not too bad. The only damage has been to our electrics which means the lights don’t work and our CCTV doesn’t work. But the computers are ok and we want to tell our customers we’re open and up and running.”

The fire station spokesman urged businesses to fit monitored smoke alarms after it was revealed the blaze had been burning for several hours before it was detected by the ground floor hire company and an on-duty postal worker.

He said: “We sincerely hope they will be able to find a way forward to get to back to where they were. We understand many business due to financial restraints do not have monitored smoke alarms and rely on someone hearing the alarm to report or act on it especially at night or when no one is on the premises

“We believe this fire had been burning for most of the night or at least six hours before we were called. There are many modern fire alarm and intruder systems some are simple and cheaper than you think, they can even send a message to your phone or you can have a company to monitor it 24 hours a day. It may one day save your business from the devastation from fire and catch it in the early stages.”

For further advice on business safety or help with fire risk assessments contact https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/.../get-support-fire-safety.