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The scene from Camden High Street on Saturday night, where dozens of people looked on in horror at the scale of the blaze |
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It’s a miracle nobody died: but could it happen again?
Safety alert as Camden Town comes to terms with devastating market blaze. Report by Richard Osley, Sara Newman and Simon Wroe
FIRE inspectors last night (Wednesday) went door-to-door ordering traders to step up safety measures at their shops and stalls in the wake of the devastating blaze which ripped through Camden Town on Saturday night.
Scores of businesses were handed a copy of regulations which explain how a change in the law has made it their individual responsibility to keep the neighbourhood’s famous markets and surrounding shops as safe from fire as possible.
The move came as police suggested that investigators are close to ruling out arson and are just waiting on forensic evidence.
Amazingly, nobody was hurt in the ferocious fire which began in the Canal market close to Camden Lock, wiping out dozens of stalls before spreading to the nearby Hawley Arms, leaving the pub in flames.
While firefighters have been praised for limiting the size of the damage, there is a growing feeling that only the fortune of lucky timing prevented a more catastrophic outcome. If the blaze had started just a few hours earlier the rush to evacuate would have been even more chaotic and fraught with increased danger.
The New Journal has learned fire safety in the busy markets could ultimately be in the hands of individual traders and that since a change in the law at the end of 2005 responsibility for safety has shifted away from the Fire Brigade. It is now up to each trader to meet fire codes and pay for any measures to make their stall or shop safe.
“It is self-regulatory and requires the person in control of premises to undertake fire risk assessments, and where appropriate, act upon the significant findings,” a Fire Brigade spokesman said.
While there is no suggestion that any individual trader acted inappropriately, senior politicians at the London Assembly – as high up as deputy mayor Nicky Gavron – have demanded private briefings on the standard of fire safety in the Camden Town area.
Holborn and St Pancras Frank Dobson MP has gone further and called for a summit with senior staff at Camden Council, the Met police, the Fire Brigade and the area’s major landholders to make sure that there is no risk of a similar incident.
He said that he had warned that Camden Market could be the scene of a fire tragedy for decades, adding: “‘This should provide an opportunity for a cool, calm and serious look at the whole question of the safety and policing of the market.”
Camden Market Holdings (CMH), the company which owns the canalside land, said it was not their responsibility to make sure every stall constantly met fire regulations.
Piers Codling, the company’s surveyor, said: “We are responsible for the overall grounds but individual traders are responsible for their own stalls.
“We walk around to make sure things are safe but you could go around the market and tell a trader to stop doing something silly and he may stop while you are there – but once you are gone he might start doing it again.”
He added: “It would be unthinkable that the Fire Brigade would allow something like Camden Market to operate if it wasn’t safe.”
It is thought that a gas pipe or gas canisters at the back of the market accelerated the fire and caused the dramatic plumes of fire and smoke.
Conservative leader Councillor Andrew Marshall said there was a “fine line” between making the markets “ultra ultra safe” and losing the relaxed nature of the rows of stalls.
He said: “If somebody was storing things in the wrong place then we need to know about it, but the important thing is that nobody was hurt here and we will do what we can to help the traders come back from this.”
The look of Camden Lock has been changed forever. As our front page picture shows, three buildings – including the former Caernarvon Castle pub – were judged unsafe and demolished in the aftermath. It could be largely up to CMH as to how the damage is repaired and market regulars want assurances that the bohemian feel of the market will not be lost.
Stephan Janes, a resident’s leader who lives in Harmood Street, said: “The problem is that the market has changed and it is too driven by profit. They have tried to squeeze so many stalls together.”
Camden Market Holdings are the same company that recently jousted with regulars over its steel and glass revamp of the nearby Stables Market. A spokeswoman said it was too early to say how the company would deal with the flattened land.
She said: “Camden Market Holdings is working with Camden Council to produce a solution that will benefit traders and the local community, taking into account the extensive damage caused by the fire to the current site.”
‘There were people screaming. It was the worst thing I ever heard’
IT was a sight seen across the city – an apocalyptic orange skyline over Camden as flames ravaged the the canalside market.
More than 90 businesses were destroyed in the fire. The intensity of the heat cracked windows on the other side of the street, bending steel girders and scorching the railway line that runs overhead.
For five hours one hundred firemen battled the blaze, evacuating nearly 500 people from their homes and cordoning off vast swathes of Camden Town. The nearby Talacre Sports Centre served as an emergency shelter for some of those made homeless for the night by the blaze.
The fire spread rapidly: eyewitnesses reported seeing smoke as early as 6.30pm and within an hour the flames were over 30 metres high.
One eyewitness, Ayman Preston, said: “We were just sitting there having a drink when the windows just came through into the bar. There were people screaming. It was the worst thing I ever heard in my life.”
Another, Lauren Allen, whose flat overlooks the epicentre of the fire, saw staff at the Hawley Arms “desperately throwing all the booze out into the street, to stop the place going up [in flames]” and heard the explosions of market traders’ gas canisters.
She said: “Everything went up so quickly. There was red hot ash falling from the sky. Nobody knew what to do.”
Click here for Saturday's article and comments |
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Your Comments:
I thought the local Council environmental health and safety team would have a duty to enforce safety in commercial properties, in the same way they inspect food premises and trading standards.
R Smith |
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