Firefighters’ ‘huge effort’ stopped blaze spreading to hotel, officer says

It took a “huge effort” from fire crews to prevent the blaze outside Glasgow Central station from spreading to a nearby hotel, a senior officer with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has said.

Assistant Chief Officer David Farries praised crews for the “fantastic work” they carried out with partners to limit the fire which broke out in Glasgow on Sunday evening.

He confirmed that the fire began in a vape shop but said it is not yet known how it started.

The officer said that an investigation is needed to understand why the fire spread in the way that it did.

Only the facade of the B-listed Victorian building at the junction of Union Street and Gordon Street has been left standing, though firefighters managed to prevent the blaze from reaching the Grand Central Hotel on the opposite side of the station.

Assistant Chief Officer Farries told journalists it was not known exactly what was inside the building where the fire started.

He said: “We’re not sure at this time, in terms of what the contents of the properties were at that point. Clearly, we were mobilised to an incident in what was a vape shop on the street.

“But we need to do full investigations with our multi-agency partners to understand the nature of the fire and understand why the fire spread the way that the fire did.”

He continued: “Clearly, we’ve stopped the fire spreading at the Grand Central Hotel, which was a huge effort from our crews.”

Asked about the ferocity of the fire, he said: “I think the pictures speak for themselves – that’s a very intense fire.”

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) said that in total more than 200 firefighters have been involved in the effort to make the area safe since the alarm was raised at 3.46pm on Sunday.

At the height of the incident, 18 fire appliances and specialist resources, including a high-volume pump drawing water from the River Clyde, were deployed to the scene.

Asked whether anything about the structure of the building caused the fire to escalate, Assistant Chief Officer Farries said: “We’re used to fighting fires in old buildings, and you’ll be aware that clearly, there’s buildings all over Scotland which are from this kind of Victorian era.

“Our firefighters are trained to work on these premises, but ultimately committing firefighters into buildings that are fully involved in fire is clearly dangerous, and it’s not something that we would do when potentially we would like to fight that fire in a different way and make sure the fire doesn’t spread to adjacent buildings.

“So it’s about making sure that we keep our firefighters safe and the public safe without letting the fire spread as far as we can possibly help.”

He added: “I think everybody’s been really shocked by the great intensity of that fire, which makes it all more impressive that they’ve managed to stop that fire.”