Severe fire at Birmingham linen company

Cato Street North, Birmingham, UK

A fire at a Birmingham linen cleaning and hire business is believed to have started accidentally.

At its height, we had 10 fire engines and some 50 firefighters at the scene in Cato Street North, Nechells.

Several 999 callers reported a plume of smoke rising from the premises at 9am on Saturday 11 March.

Our crews arrived to find a severe fire. Local roads were closed during our firefighting operations.

At one stage, firefighters wearing breathing apparatus were withdrawn from the premises after part of the roof collapsed.

Four main jets were used to extinguish the fire and we started to scale down our resources at 12.45pm.

However, some crews remained into the evening and made revisits throughout the night to ensure there were no remaining hotspots.

We worked with agencies including the police, utility companies and highways officers to bring the incident to a safe conclusion and to minimise disruption to nearby businesses.