Fire at Sainsbury's Superstore
16th December 1993
Feature High Quality Photo Gallery of this incident
T
he afternoon of the above date saw one of the most publicised fires of the year when
Sainsbury's superstore at Chichester
was enveloped in a massive fire which completely destroyed the building.
The store built in
1985
was substantially extended in 1992, bringing the overall dimensions to
104 x 94 metres.
The single storey building was constructed on a disused gravel pit site, which had been filled from rubbish disposal.
The possibility of methane gas release had been taken into account and a system for methane detection had been installed throughout the building.
The buildings fire warning system, which incorporated Heat & Smoke detection, activated automatically on the day routing the call to alarm company's collector station, who passed it on to the Brigade at
14:42 hours.
Some
500
people, including
180
staff were in the store and its of great tribute that the staff completed the evacuation of the store promptly, efficiently and without injury to anyone.
The single access roadway to the site caused problems with the large number of cars leaving the area hampering the arrival of fire appliances.
Crews from Chichester were on the scene in three minutes and confronted with thick black issuing from the rear of the store, began firefighting using jets & hose reels while the officer-in-charge increased the attendance to six pumping appliances.
Breathing apparatus wearers
were committed to fight the fire inside the building where there was only light smoke, however shortly afterwards the fire broke through the ceiling of the storage, took hold in the roof spaces and rapidly spread.
Within 15 minutes of the fire starting the retail area had filled with dense black smoke almost down to the floor level, and this together with rapid fire spread required the attendance of a further nine pumping appliances.
A major effort was made to stop the fire at the internal wall dividing the building, but it was soon obvious that the fire had breached the wall at high level as the fire fighters could hear and feel the fire passing over there heads.
The attendance was increased to
25 pumps,
and in addition three hydraulic platforms two breathing apparatus support vehicles, a foam tender, a control unit and hose laying lorry were in use with water supplies from four hydrants and a pumped relay from Westhampnett lake.
After 45 minutes several flashovers occurred and fire fighters were showered with molten bitumen as the roof failed, forcing them to withdraw to continue fire fighting operations from outside the building.
The fire was brought under control in just three hours but it was not until
19:40hrs
that fire fighters could again enter the building to extinguish large pockets of fire.
THE BRIGADE MAINTAINED THE ATTENDANCE FOR A FURTHER TWO DAYS.
This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 4 or above at 800 x 600
Produced by West Sussex Fire Brigade Web Technology.
©Copyright West Sussex Fire Brigade 2000
West Sussex Fire Brigade Disclaimer
Information Provider
Last Updated Saturday August 18, 2001 4:41 PM
